MOVIE: Tropic Thunder

I just got back from watching Tropic Thunder at the Rave with Chuck, and I have to admit that the movie was funny and enjoyable despite it having three of my not-so-favorite actors in it (Ben Stiller, Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Cruise). What did it for me were the departure from standard comedy fare, the co-immersion into location the audience was provided, and Robert Downey Jr. (oh Robert).

Tropic Thunder is a movie about a making of a movie, and its premise of putting their actors in a true-feeling setting under true-false pretenses required a bit of a buy-in from the audience. But once they got through the necessary evil "ehh" and "saw that coming" moments, the rest flowed pretty well.

The film didn't take itself serious nor should it have, and some of the predictability gave the audience material to relate to and to follow. That said, there were many moments here and there that would catch the audience off guard. One for me was the realization that Tom Cruise was in the movie disguised as Les Grossman -- his turn was both impressive and highly disturbing. Talking about actors-that-usually-bother-me-but-didn't-in-this-movie, I was really glad to see Matthew McConaughey keep his shirt on in this movie -- also, I was glad to see Ben Stiller not go "fully-retarded" in this movie.

Now Robert Downey Jr, who looks like the love child of Javier Bardem and Brendan Fraser, with his golden locks and his piercing blue eyes... only accentuated in this film by his experimental skin pigmentation... is one incredibly cool and attractive dude. He was very consistent and convincing as Anyways, it'll be interesting to see if he will stay on the radar for awards come this January (AwardsDaily has him as a Best Supporting Actor contender... woo!).

Anyways, Tropic Thunder was very funny and worth a watch.


Below is the "Tropic Thunder - MTV Movie Awards sketch" that I pulled from

this site (<- so there's your credit. don't sue me, bro). Enjoy!: