The next level

Rating: 9/10 (26 September 2009)

This is a brilliant piece of work. A comedy/parody that actually emulates at the level of its source material. Ben Stiller has clearly done his homework and here recreates many epic battle scenes. The photography is stunning and the direction is nothing less than awesome, for the first twenty minutes or so. Although the movie loses direction a little in the second and third acts it has enough great script and sheer momentum that it never falls below excellent. This really is a stunning piece of work. Look at what else is out there. This is constantly funny but also technically brilliant and very artistic. There are no 'longeurs' and every scene moves the action forward. The performances are spectacularly good. Tom cruise still looks slightly too 'Tom Cruise' but his lines are almost perfect. As a whole his part is 1000 times better than in that defecant Magnolia. Robert Downey Jr is almost embarrassingly good. He plays Bill Cosby playing an actor in a movie, but then he slips into a stereotype of all 'our favorite' Black actors. He is challenged by the one real Black guy and this scene serves to show that he is an actor, playing an Australian actor who is trying to play a Black American. Ther are too many other outstanding features to mention, such as the child general and Jack Black's best work in years. All in all, this is not a mainstream movie. It is Something Else.