I had been hearing a lot about the movie Tropic Thunder. A comedy about four actors who are dropped into the Vietnam jungles to shoot a movie "guerrilla-style".
I saw the movie last Friday, and while the above description may accurately describe the film, it does not really tell you what the movie is about. The movie is really about four actors coming to terms with their demons. Jack Black a the drug addicted comedian, Brandon T. Jackson is a closet gay rap star, Jay Baruchel is a character actor who will never be a star, Robert Downey Jr. is a multiple Academy Award-winning actor who has lost any sense of who he is due to diving too deep into his roles, and Ben Stiller is the fading action-hero actor who's desperately trying to restart his career. I'm not sure if they intended to hide the introspective story of finding and accepting who we are in a comedy hoping that it would draw in a larger audience, or if they just over did the story which dwarfed the comedy. Either way, if you're going to the movie looking for a "Stripes" style comedy, you will be disappointed.
I'm not going to say that this is a bad movie, but it's not going to win any academy awards either. I'd rack this up as an over-budgeted movie made for the actors, not the audience.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Tropic Thunder
I had been hearing a lot about the movie Tropic Thunder. A comedy about four actors who are dropped into the Vietnam jungles to shoot a movie "guerrilla-style".
I saw the movie last Friday, and while the above description may accurately describe the film, it does not really tell you what the movie is about. The movie is really about four actors coming to terms with their demons. Jack Black a the drug addicted comedian, Brandon T. Jackson is a closet gay rap star, Jay Baruchel is a character actor who will never be a star, Robert Downey Jr. is a multiple Academy Award-winning actor who has lost any sense of who he is due to diving too deep into his roles, and Ben Stiller is the fading action-hero actor who's desperately trying to restart his career. I'm not sure if they intended to hide the introspective story of finding and accepting who we are in a comedy hoping that it would draw in a larger audience, or if they just over did the story which dwarfed the comedy. Either way, if you're going to the movie looking for a "Stripes" style comedy, you will be disappointed.
I'm not going to say that this is a bad movie, but it's not going to win any academy awards either. I'd rack this up as an over-budgeted movie made for the actors, not the audience.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment