Tropic Thunder

YES!

Have you ever gone to see a movie that you knew was going to be bad? A movie that you thought would be so bad that while you were watching it, you were waiting for the movie to fall flat on it's movie face? I have. It was called Tropic Thunder. I sat there, and every time the plot would become more ridiculous or they'd add a new element to the back story of one of the characters I'd think to myself, "...ugh, here we go...", and every time, the movie would either go in in a completely different direction than I thought it was going, or the cast would deliver the satirical material with such a biting wit that it... filled me with glee.

Once again, Robert Downey, Jr. steals the show. Not to the extent that he did in Iron Man, but that's just because of the nature of the film. If not for the performances of the rest of the cast, Tropic Thunder may as well have been called Kirk Lazarus (Downey's character's name). This was an ensemble effort, though, and the lot of them were mind bogglingly hysterical. Jack Black, Ben Stiller (who i usually despise), Jay Baruchel, Brandon Jackson, Nick Nolte, Danny McBride, Steve Coogan, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Cruise and Bill Hader are all pitch-perfect in their portrayal of these silly, silly people.

I hate Ben Stiller. I put him on a list of actors that I generally avoid along with Nicolas Cage, Bill Paxton and Bill Pullman. I don't think much of what he does is funny and I'm sick of that character he plays; you know, the one he played in The Heartbreak Kid, Night at the Museum, Meet the Fockers, Envy, Along Came Polly, Duplex, Meet the Parents, and There's Something about Mary; the awkwardly, uncomfortable, good-looking good guy who would be able to get the girl and succeed at his job if it weren't for either a specific, zany character trait, or just a general overall clumsiness. We get it... we got it in 1998... now it's old. With the summer coming to a close, I had pinned my hopes on Pineapple Express to keep this incredible summer movie season from going out with a whimper. Like I said, I thought Tropic Thunder was going to suck, so Pineapple Express was pretty much it. I was generally indifferent about Pineapple Express leaning towards not really liking it at all. Unlike David Gordon Green with Pineapple Express, Stiller did an amazing job mixing the action and the funny. He created one of the best satires of the movie industry that I've ever seen.

And, by the way, that's what it is, folks, a satire. Anyone who's planning on boycotting or protesting this movie for any reason; whether it be because of Downey's portrayal of a white Australian actor playing an African-American wrought with stereotypes, or because Stiller's character goes "full retard" in an effort to win an Academy Award; really should kill themselves. These characters are jabs at Hollywood, NOT black people or "people with intellectual disabilities". If you can't see that, then maybe you're the ones with the intellectual disability... or maybe you're just retarded.

See Tropic Thunder.