|
After the standard theater ads and coming attraction trailers, the lights dim and Tropic Thunder opens with ... ads and coming attraction trailers that introduce us to the "actors" we'll be spending the next two hours with. Who's on the A-list? Jeff "Fats" Portnoy, famous for his Eddie Murphy-style, multiple-role comedies featuring a fat, farting family. Also hip-hop mogul Alpa Chino, who's made his fortune pimping an energy drink called Booty Sweat and a Busta-Nut Bar. Fading action star Tugg Speedman is part of the cast, too, as is the well-respected method actor Kirk Lazarus—whose recent film about gay monks had the critics buzzing.
 They've all been recruited to create the war movie of all war movies—a Vietnam epic that will make Apocalypse Now look like it was crafted by grade schoolers and shot with instamatic cameras. Everyone is hoping that this "serious" action/drama will revive careers and make the Academy sit up and take notice.
But the movie is reportedly running a month behind schedule, and they're only five days into the shoot. When the pampered actors can't be corralled and an overzealous crew member squanders a $4 million explosion, producer Les Grossman threatens to pull the plug. Panicked, the director plants cameras and explosives in the jungle, sets the actors loose in the East Asian wild and shoots the rest of the flick guerilla-style.
What could possibly go wrong with a great idea like that?
Uh, drug runners who aren't exactly into fake guns?
:: Review
Offensive, vulgar, coarse, profane, obscene ...
At what point did these kinds of adjectives become so acceptably mundane when discussing a mainstream comedy? I'm not sure, but Ben Stiller has certainly been a big part of making it happen, from There's Something About Mary a decade ago, to The Heartbreak Kid last year and now Tropic Thunder, which he wrote, directed and stars in. Here he takes satirical aim at the Hollywood dream-machine—skewering narcissistic actors, pompous directors and tyrannical producers. He starts with a creative idea, adds in a number of unexpected cameos and actually generates a few laughs with some of his quirky humor.
Gross, smutty, churlish, low-minded ...
But those moments are sucked into a whirlpool of thick profanity, lewd dialogue, offensive gags (that sometimes revolve around racial issues and the mentally handicapped) and totally repugnant blood-and-guts imagery. Over-the-top, gruesome-just-to-be-gruesome violence is peppered throughout and is intended to be humorous.
Base, disgusting, nasty, ribald, raunchy ...
In a collider.com interview, Stiller was asked about all that volatile spewing. "It's a very slippery slope," he responded. "There's no clear guidelines. I guess if you have two [f-words] in a movie it's an R, but there aren't any real clear guidelines on what they say you can and can't do. It's all up to interpretation." Too bad and too true. Because that means all too often writers and producers and directors use their personal interpretations to push out more mainstream movie fare like Tropic Thunder.
Ugly, vile, rude, raw ...
For which we must laboriously lengthen an already very long list of negatively descriptive adjectives.
» Post Comment
» No Comments
There are no comments up to now.
|
If there were bumper stickers in mythic Greece, I'm pretty sure Perseus would've slapped one on Pegasus that said, "I'd rather be fishing." The demigod surely... More
Before Jake Sully, before Han Solo, before virtually every science fiction hero you can brainstorm in two minutes or less, there was John Carter. Author Edgar... More
"Good afternoon, director Brad Bird. The situation is this: The economy is still in the dumps. People are spending money on jumbo bundles of ramen instead of... More