August 29, 2008: Tropic Thunder
I saw this with my wife and some friends in the theatre. I was a bit scared, after the unconventional opening, that my wife would hate the film, since it was all movie in-jokes and over-the-top profanity (both of which I love and neither of which she has much use for). Anyway, things settled into a more normal groove after that, and it turned out to be a pretty solid movie. 84% on RottenTomatoes.com? I don’t know about that. But pretty solid.
Ben Stiller as a director isn’t too prolific, his most “Stilleresque” entry having been Zoolander in 2001, which I only recently saw for the first time (and didn’t particularly love, except for the scene at the gas station which I definitely did love). He’s generally a bankable actor (There’s Something About Mary, Night at the Museum), if a bit uneven (Mystery Men, The Heartbreak Kid). I’m only now clueing into his ties to the Judd Apatow crowd (despite guest roles in both Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared), this thought having been triggered by seeing Jay Baruchel so prominently featured in Tropic Thunder. It’s great to see Baruchel finally making it big(ger), rather than just being a pink-eye-infected “stoner bud” in Knocked Up, after having previously been the main star of a TV show (albeit a one-season wonder).
As an aside, let just me say: I really wanted Mystery Men to be funny. I really did. It wasn’t. I associate that film with Ben Stiller (for better or worse). This is unfortunate.
The movie is more of a Hollywood parody than I had expected – I knew it was about the movie-making business, but hadn’t realized that it would cut as broadly (if not as deeply) as it did. Good to see. Along these lines, the first half was pretty snappy, but the second half degenerated into something more typical/formulaic, not necessarily bad in the second half, but I think it suffered by comparison. Throughout the movie, I was thinking that I was glad to be seeing it, but that I wouldn’t need to see it again any time soon.
Except, of course, for Robert Downey, Jr. His performance is the big news story about this movie, and with good reason. I won’t say much about it in order to avoid colouring (heh) people’s perceptions, but I (as an Academy Awards follower – that epic story for a different post) will be very disappointed if he doesn’t get a Best Supporting Actor nomination for this performance. It shouldn’t even really be a spanner in the political works since Heath Ledger WILL win Best Supporting Actor for The Dark Knight, but a nod for Downey would be the right thing to happen.
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