It's my 100th post!
To me, personal movie hell would be The Cable Guy, with Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller. I can't stand There's Something about Mary (the movie that sent Stiller to the A-List) or Zoolander (Ben's 2001 directorial follow-up to The Cable Guy). What, then, possessed me to see Tropic Thunder? See the title of my post.
(By the way, it's 10:23 p.m. EDT. I'm being a good American; I'm watching the debate on my computer.)
Tropic Thunder (seen Aug. 19, eighth movie of August)
Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr., triumphs as Self-Important Serious Thespian Russ-- Kirk Lazarus (“five-time Academy-Award winner,” one of those solemn movie voices tells us) in Tropic Thunder, the Ben Stiller-written and -directed Hollywood satire.
The mocking ad and trailers that open Tropic Thunder are hilarious, especially the pairing of secretly gay monks Downey and “MTV Movie Award Winner for Best Kiss Tobey Maguire,” scored to Enigma (“Sade, Dit Moi”). The plot itself, spoiled actors encounter real bad guys while making a Vietnam War flick, has a decent hits-to-misses ratio and connects most with Lazarus as an African-American platoon leader - you see, he’s dyed his skin black. The actor rarely breaks form, even when consoling his “fellow soldiers” with a speech that’s really the theme to The Jeffersons - and when he does “slip,” all-American Downey uses a Mel Gibson accent.
Downey’s sharpest, most hysterical moment comes when Lazarus pontificates to Stiller’s action hero on how to win an Oscar: Think a throwdown between Forrest Gump and I Am Sam.
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2 comments:
Congratulations on your 100th post - even if it's not about a movie that interests me!
Lisa,
I'm glad you broaden your Ben Stiller horizons. You don't have to appreciate him to appreciate his work (afterall, he did write the movie and create Kirk Lazerus.)
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