With great talent, comes great responsibility. Or something like that. And this movie fails to deliver. With Ben Stiller and Jack Black there is no reason for this to not be one of the funniest movies of the year and yet, it’s not. This movie is basically making fun of Hollywood, and most of the jokes, are insider Hollywood jokes. Problem is, none of us are Hollywood insiders. I’m sure this movie kills at private screenings with a bunch of big time actors and what not, but for Joe the Plumber, it’s not going to do it.
I’m not saying this movie is terrible, it’s not, it’s just not nearly as good as it should be. The one part of the movie where I actually laughed is just a quick, throwaway line by Tom Cruise’s character. He’s just hung up the phone on the terrorist and yelling at them with very choice language and after he hangs up, he looks at his assistant and says “Find out who that was.” That was the only thing that even came close to getting a rise out of me.
The movie, as you probably know by now, is about a group of big-time actors who form a dream/nightmare team to make a Vietnam War film. Ben Stiller is the action hero, Robert Downey Jr. is the award-winning actor, Jack Black is the fart-joke guy, Jay Baruchel is the new actor, and Brandon Jackson is the young rapper looking to expand his brand name. And they are all lead by a first time director played by Steve Coogan.
Tom Cruise who plays the guy backing the movie, threatens to shut the movie down after just a week of shooting, which causes Coogan to freak out and take the guys into the jungle to shoot the movie voyeur style. This of course backfires and after Stiller gets captured by drug lords in the jungle, the rest of the crew has to break him out, classic Hollywood from there, each character over comes his flaws to become a better part of the team, you’ve seen it a million times.
The acting is fine, the film-making is fine, it’s just basically the script. Which is slightly surprising. If you watch the extras you learn that the script was in development for 10 years, so you’d think after 10 years they’d get it right and figure stuff out, but it’s still not good with plenty of things to leave you dumbfounded. Such as, why don’t the fake soldiers pick up the real guns? Oh that’s right, that would make sense and make the escape easy. Hollywood can’t have that.
Tropic Thunder is presented in 16×9 Widescreen format and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound.
Everything is ok sound and video wise. Although there is nothing spectacular.
There are commentaries with the production people, and another set of commentaries with the actors.
This is the second disc of the 2-Disc Director’s Cut list of extras.
This second disc has a solid 2 hours worth of extras, most of it could be clamped down into 2 or 3 segments, but they break it up into more to make it look like there are more extras. “Before the Thunder,” “The Hot LZ” are both behind the scenes looks at different parts of the movie. “Blowing S#%t up,” “Designing the Thunder” are both looks at the behind the scenes of the movie, just a little different parts of the movie than the first two. The “cast of Tropic Thunder” is just that, a quick look at each actor. “Rain of Madness” and “Dispatches from the Edge of Madness” are both Documentary-style pieces treating Tropic Thunder like an actual movie. Very much a “Heart of Darkness” spoof.
Deleted and Extended scenes, nothing important here.
Alternate Ending basically the same ending, but just different enough. Still useless.
A promo from the MTV Movie Awards, good. Love it when Stiller references Downey’s troubled past.
Tropic Thunder * Full Mags This shows you the unedited footage from some of the scenes. It’s interesting for people who want to get into editing, but normal people will just stare and ask why.
Video Rehearsals
Not good. Not great. Should be much better than it is, but it’s not. If you have nothing better to do, it’s capable enough of killing 2 hours, but don’t blame me when you reach the end of the movie and say to yourself “Well, there’s 2 hours of my life I’ll never get back.”
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