Rapid Review: Tropic Thunder
We all love Robert Downey Jr., and Jack Black is OK, too ...
There's a real reason why critics loved this movie. It pokes, prods, and makes laughs possible that otherwise would not be OK in the walking, living, thinking, sympathetic (and PC) real world. And it brings down the film industry, which many a critic, I bet, not-so-secretly wants to see.
And so, in those ha-ha Hollywood moments, the movie gets a little too inside baseball, if you're just looking for the good ol' haha.
Yes, Downey nails his role as the way-too-serious Aussie method actor, Kirk Lazarus (one part Mel Gibson, another part Russel Crowe). Flossin' rapper Alpa Chino, played by Brandon T. Jackson gives the authenticity that balances out the jokes that a guy in blackface would otherwise not be allowed to get away with.
Laughs, yeah, and not too much running/preachy commentary on movies or the world - at least not too much to easily ignore.
The film could just as easily be seen at home, if not for some of the fantastic explosions that just want a big screen. And to see (mild Spoiler alert) Tom Cruise as the studio chief Les Grossman deliver one of the most perfect strings of expletives and insults in a single rant (to the head of one of the world's largest heroin dealers, at that) is worth the ticket.
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