Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Tropic Thunder or Tragic Blunder?

I posted a short movie review a little while back, and gave Julie & Julia a two thumbs up rating. So, I figured I'd continue my movie reviews with the next movie I saw. Although I saw J&J in the theater, I saw Tropic Thunder on DVD a few days ago.

It got low/mixed reviews from most newspaper/TV critics, but IMDB had it rated at a 7.3 by it's users. I thought the trailers were mildly funny, and thought it had some potential. Though, I wasn't betting the farm on it - I picked up the DVD used.

The movie starts off bad, and pretty much stays there. The story is of four prima donna Hollywood actors and their *adventure* filming a war movie. It's got Robert Downey Jr. playing an Australian actor playing a black man. During a large percentage of the opening scenes, and a significant percentage of the rest of the movie, I could not understand what he was saying. Ben Stiller's character (the hero of the movie within a movie) was infamous for his prior movie where he played a mentally challenged young man. His performance in that was supposed to be bad, which was supposed to make it funny. But it wasn't. The 3rd prima donna was known for his movies where he plays fat people that fart a lot. The 4th, I don't know what was supposed to make him famous, but he was busy hocking a beverage called Booty Sweat.

It's not that the movie premise or any of the character 'twists' were that bad. And it's not as if the movie didn't have
multiple jokes, prat falls, punch lines that were funny. It's just that none of the jokes were more than 'chuckle' funny, or 'groan' funny, and the rest of the movie was like being forced to endure sand paper on your eyeballs.

1 comment:

  1. I couldn't agree more with this assessment. Unfortunately, we watched it on the big screen with the kids. Was definitely NOT worth the money, but the time with the kids always is.

    ::hugs::

    Cher

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