Review of Tropic Thunder (2008) by Campbell P — 03 Aug 2015

What made Tropic Thunder such a fun film to watch were the characters that director and writer Ben Stiller created. I'm normally not the biggest fan of Stiller's. I didn't care for Night at the Museum or Zoolander in the least.

Tropic Thunder changed that for me, he did a pretty good job making this film so fun for the viewer. This movie is a really original story that I'm surprised no one had thought of before. The story follows a movie crew that was sent to Vietnam to make the actors in the film feel like they were literally the movie.

From then on its a lot of laughs from comedic actors like Jack Black, Jay Baruchel, and Danny McBride. Also talents such as Tom Cruise, Robert Downey Jr, and Brandon T Jackson. One of the highlights of the entire film is the beginning trailers that were made to advertise the actors in the film.

That was perfectly edited and had perfect comedic tag lines to go along with each movie. The other highlight is the acting of course! Robert Downey Jr, Jack Black, and Tom Cruise made me laugh so hard in this film because this isn't normally what they do in their movies.

Tom Cruise's dancing scenes were on the floor laughing material. The other actors for sure were good in the movie but they play themselves basically. Ben Stiller had the same brand of comedy all the time where he makes dorky faces into the camera, Jay Baruchel plays the straight man, and Brandon T Jackson had the pleasure of being the typical black side character who really didn't have much of a purpose being in this movie because of much he was overshadowed.

I would go as far to say that this is kind of like a parody movie in more than one way. The characters have action movie cliches at times, there's a ton of over the top humor that you wouldn't find in other comedies, and there's the Hollywood trailers in the beginning.

This movie if it's viewed as a parody makes it even more clever than I expected it to be. The set was built really nicely and made me feel as though this place existed and it looked really neat at the same time.

I can totally see this movie being viewed as one of the best recent comedies because of its unusual sense of humor which I think it kinda is to. Tropic Thunder has a lot of character charisma and chemistry built between characters and never failed to make me laugh.

Ben Stiller did something that I can really recommend to someone and watch anytime it's on tv. B+.