Not my cup of blood

Rating: 3/10 (28 August 2008)

I hate Ben Stiller. Actually I really dislike him. Some times he's okay some times he's not. I find his sense of humor often obvious and stupid. So with that in mind is it any wonder that I had problems with Tropic Thunder? The plot of the film has a director of a mega-action epic unable to control his stars and in desperation drops them in the jungle with some notes telling them to make it up as they go along. The problem is things instantly turn real, though the dunderheads don't realize it at first.
Scattershot film satire on Hollywood is often too much of a not so good thing. Beginning with one of the bloodiest sequences in any war film (its so over the top that its played for laughs even as it disgusts) the film drives head long at deflating everything Hollywood and superstar. No one and nothing is left unscathed. The problem is that the humor runs from dead on to brain dead stupid. Much of it seems to be funny if you're on the inside of Hollywood, which I'm not so the performances fall flat. Tom Cruise's much heralded portrait of a studio exec left me scratching my head yea he's like a lot of management people I know but whom ever he was referencing was lost on me.(How funny one finds the film seems to run in relation to how much knows about Hollywood. The more my friends know the funnier they find it, the less they know the more they dislike it) Other bits like the now infamous "retard" discussion are really well done on an intellectual level, but at they don't work as performed. Stiller is much to knowing in his direction and you never believe he's not aware that the camera is right there with him.
The easiest way to know if you're going to like this is know if you find Ben Stiller and his films like Zoolander and Cable Guy funny. If you do you have a shot.
I liked it in pieces and in theory but not as a whole.
And yes Robert Downey is excellent as a white guy pretending to be black.