Let's Revisit "Tropic Thunder"

About a week ago my wife and I watched "Tropic Thunder" for the first time in years. Let’s discuss.

Right off the bat, this movie is hilarious. I loved it the first time I watched it, I remember watching it several times afterward and loving it and I laughed just as hard watching it this most recent time. It is a very funny, very well written movie. It is filled with jokes. It is like watching an episode of "30 Rock". There are jokes seemingly every thirty seconds to a minute. The cast is stellar and they all do such a good job portraying different types of actors/musicians. Jack Black is awesome, Ben Stiller is perfect, Brandon T Jackson has some of the best lines, Jay Baruchel is great as the young up and comer and Robert Downey Jr is superb. He should've been nominated for an Oscar. Even guys with smaller roles, like Steve Coogan, Bill Hader, Nick Nolte, Tom Cruise, Matthew McConaughey and Danny McBride shine. This movie is filled with great actors and they are all up to the task. The movie holds up.

After watching it, my wife and I had a long talk trying to decide if this movie could be made today. "Tropic Thunder" came out in 2008, thirteen years ago. A lot has changed since then. We have gone through some shit as a country. There have been some major things that have happened, and the world is not a better place. We are currently living in a pandemic, which hasn't happened for 100 years. The former "administration" is to blame for a lot of it. The new administration is doing their best to try and get back to "normal", but they have their work cut out for them. So when looking back at this movie, and after a few weeks of thought, I do not think this movie would be able to get made today.

I have already said that Robert Downey Jr is exceptional in this movie. He takes on the role of the super committed actor to the next level. He is simply perfect. He is also in black face for most of this movie. Now, they make a very clear joke of this very early on in the movie. They point out that he is such a committed actor that he had his skin dyed for the role. And when shooting the movie, the back and forth between RDJ and Jackson is some of the funniest stuff in the whole movie. It is comedy gold. I do think "Tropic Thunder" does a good job of showing how utterly absurd and crazy some actors can be, but something like black face has been, and always will be, very, very, very wrong. It is disrespectful and not cool. There is also the whole backstory of Stiller's character doing a movie called "Simple Jack". "Simple Jack" is about a mentally handicapped man, and Stiller plays the part for laughs. And it works. Hell, the whole conversation between him and RDJ talking about the movie is one of the funniest things I have ever seen in a movie. But I cringed watching him do the "Simple Jack" stuff. I laughed, but every laugh was met with me or my wife or both of us kind of feeling bad for laughing at the scenes with "Simple Jack". Again, the role is played for laughs, it is in this movie to show how ridiculous some actors take some of their roles, but it is so very offensive. It is wrong. It is tough to watch and you feel bad for laughing after you do. Everything else in the movie is okay. Jackson's backstory of being gay is not offensive at all, and it ends very happily for him. Baruchel is funny the whole time. Jack Black is goofy and silly and awesome. All the stuff with Tom Cruise is very funny. Danny McBride has some great one liners. But if this movie was to be made today they would have to take away two of the biggest jokes in the whole thing. It cannot be done. But that may be a good thing. I am not mad at it at all in fact.

"Tropic Thunder" should stay in the early 2000's. I'm over all the remakes and reboots. "Tropic Thunder" will always be a movie I will laugh at when I watch it, but there is absolutely no way it could, nor should it be made now.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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