Taking a risk like this today would threaten Cruise’s marketability. Yes, it’s funny at times, but it lacks any empathy for its targets it’s surprising we weren’t more turned off at the time. Watch it now, and the film is really just a mixed bag of crude humor hurled at those who’ve been historically mocked. Tropic Thunder is also misguided in its depiction of Southeast Asia and the mentally challenged, painting the former as a corrupt drug den of stereotypes and showing Stiller tackle the latter for cheap laughs. (Then again, the Academy could never be accused of being “in touch.”) still earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination at that year’s Academy Awards. It’s problematic on multiple levels, yet Downey Jr. It was basically a roundabout way of putting blackface in a major studio comedy. plays an overly serious and committed Australian Oscar winner who undergoes a controversial procedure in order to play an African-American sergeant in the film’s war movie within a movie. It’s fascinating that Cruise was back in good graces after Tropic Thunder, an occasionally hilarious movie that veers, if not leaps, into offensive territory. In a spoof of method actors like Russell Crowe, Robert Downey Jr. However, a decade later, the part carries with it a whiff of irony- Tropic Thunder was both a lifeline for Cruise and his brand and a project that he would never touch today. The performance had former naysayers back on his side. When the film hit theaters, Cruise’s character, Les Grossman, emerged as a scene-stealing, vulgar burst of rage his behavior might have echoed Cruise’s own internal fury directed at a Hollywood system that had raised him up and then torn him down. While the film didn’t exactly redefine the genre like Animal House or speak to a generation like Superbad, it did serve a very important purpose: it cemented Cruise’s comeback.Īfter a disastrous streak of bad PR in the mid-2000s, a rebound for the actor seemed like an impossible mission indeed, yet this small supporting role helped redeem him. was the only one who gave the audience anything to chew on.The Ben Stiller–directed comedy, which was released 10 years ago today, was a $92 million movie bankrolled by Paramount/DreamWorks. Ben Stiller is the same old one-dimensional wacky Ben Stiller that you either love or are completely ambivalent towards. There are definitely some funny moments, but my lack of interest in the characters made the time between punchlines drag so much more. The opening trailers are hilarious, and the first 30-or-so minutes had the audience rolling, but the movie is insubstantial at its core. Twice! There's no room for real satire when you're busy working with the broken formulae that make this type of comedy so derivative to begin with. Can't get enough of that "white-guy-dances-awkwardly-to-hip-hop" scene that has appeared in every single big-budget comedy made in the past decade? Let's do it. Jonesing for your monthly fix of fart/blood/fat/gay/black/retard jokes? You got it. This is unfortunate, because it is at its essence a very generic comedy. Critics are grooming this to be the comedy event of the Summer. What is supposed to make it funny is its self-awareness of that fact. This movie is just as much of a useless exercise in Hollywood excess as any other. This is "Tropic Thunder" lambastes Hollywood for its excesses? Nonsense. "Tropic Thunder" lambastes Hollywood for its excesses? Nonsense.
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