Movie Review - Tropic Thunder

Just got back home from the midnite sneak preview of Tropic Thunder. Of which, by the way, there was nothing after the credits worth staying for.

There were about 50 or so people in the theater and even though I didn't make it a point to look at every single person, I was pretty positive that at my ripe old age of 35, I was the oldest in the crowd.

Ignoring everyone else, I did my typical routine of reading up on the movie I was about to see on imdb.com while waiting for the previews to start and the majority of the reviews gave 8/10 stars and some 10/10. So after seeing the trailer and thinking the movie looked great, and then reading these great reviews, I was really looking forward to seeing Tropic Thunder.

I don't know what went wrong, but I spent practically the entire time the movie was playing, wondering if I was perhaps watching a different movie than everyone else. I would hear hoots of laughter and I just didn't get what was so funny. For example, character is on the ground with his feet in the air complaining about his ass hurting and there are HOWLS of laughter erupting all around me. And that's funny...why? Did I miss something? (I'm pretty sure I didn't fall asleep.)

There were lots of violent scenes that borderlined on grotesque (hole in the helmet squirting out never ending gushes of blood a la Saving Private Ryan) that were supposed to be funny and there was quite a bit of slapstick humor (I'm not a huge fan of that) with people getting tossed about and there were lots of really annoying characters that I flat out didn't care if they survived or not.

However, I will say that ALL of the scenes with Tom Cruise were excellent! His character was truly entertaining for every minute that he performed, but for the rest of the cast....not so much. Ben Stiller was rocking some nice looking biceps so that was pretty good eye candy for me, but it wasn't enough to completely hold my attention to the story. One more tiny thing that was kinda neat at the end...all of the brief cameos. So I guess, to be fair, maybe you have to be in a certain kind of goofball comedy mood to enjoy this flick, that I apparently wasn't in. And maybe in a few weeks or so, I might give it another chance.

Until/unless that time, though, for now, I'm NOT going to recommend it. Tom was great but not quite worth the price of admission to see his short 5 or 6 scenes.

After you see it, and think it was great, feel free to argue the points with me.

Vixy :]