TROPIC THUNDER

I sense a trend in this summer's comedies. And I'm not saying it's a bad one...but I do notice that there are a lot of things...exploding this summer. So beyond the atrocious video games that distract them from fruitful interaction with others, are the Youth (capitalisation intentional) to be further desensitized to violence and war, through films like TROPIC THUNDER, as they were to violence and pot, from a film like PINEAPPLE EXPRESS? Well, when the humor works as well as it did in both these movies, I don't know if I care to complain. I'm not a mother.

Besides, the things stacking up against TROPIC THUNDER's successful hilarity and wonderfulness, despite its overall message of violence as balm for the funny bone, are numerous: Ben Stiller is in it. Ben Stiller directed it. Matthew McConaughey is in it. His hair looks like an afro. These are things that, ordinarily, should give us pause. But when the film is actually a tongue-in-cheek look (stubbornly in cheek...firmly in cheek...very, very much in delicious cheek) at what both these men and others like them do daily to maintain the precipice over culture that we ourselves have bestowed upon them, it becomes a different type of comedy, an untypical Ben Stiller comedy, a comedy very much worth watching.

In other words, TROPIC THUNDER rocked my socks. It was so, so funny, right from the intro faux-trailers to the surely ego-fed dance number featuring a cleverly disguised soon-to-be-has-been A-lister during the beginning of the closing credits. Yeah, a few too many things exploded--this is big-budget comedy at its finest, I suppose--but give me Robert Downey Jr in black face as a lead farmer (inside joke, see the movie), and I'll give you two thumbs up.

A note on the black face, though...mildly inappropriate. It didn't offend me--he wasn't making fun of "my" people after all--but the fact that he portrays a stereotypical black person, and the one black person in the film ALSO portrays a stereotypical black person, albeit one of a different color (PUN!), kind of gives way to folks seasoned at getting bristled...deciding to get bristled. I haven't heard anything yet, but who says we won't?

plot: Actors fail; still make money.
thought: I am a rooster illusion!
in five: 4/5

get some: http://www.tropicthunder.com/