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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The Advent Calendar of Great Holiday Movies: Day 12 "Eyes Wide Shut"

The pre-Christmas Day season of Advent is upon us. Here at SeedSing we love the chocolaty goodness of getting a piece of candy once a day until we get to open our presents. As our gift to you we will present a great movie associated with the holiday season. Many will be awesome, some will be extra awesome. Enjoy.

Day 12: “Eyes Wide Shut”

Opened Doors: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11

The holiday season can be quite busy for married couples. Many times we need to visit our parents, and with a married couple that is at least two sets of parents. If the couple has children, there is a number of school activities that must be attended. Within their own lives, married couples have numerous work gatherings, and parties thrown by their friends. With the constant need to be somewhere, or doing something, a married couple rarely finds time for themselves. Oh, and sex together is almost definitely out of the question.

In the summer of 1999 Stanley Kubrick’s last film “Eyes Wide Shut” opened in theaters. The legendary director had passed away a few months prior to film’s release. The production of “Eyes Wide Shut” was at four hundred days, a record that has still not been broken. The movie was a moderate success and has gone on as a curiosity for some, and part of a film student’s curriculum for others.

The plot of “Eyes Wide Shut” is fairly simple, and nonsensical. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, the Hollywood power couple of 1999, starred in the film as a married couple. Kidman’s character tells Cruise about a fantasy she has about having sex with a Navy man they met last year. Cruise is not happy about his wife’s fantasy, so he decides to go out on the town and be a little naughty. He almost kisses a prostitute, gets embarrassed and threatened by a secret society at an orgy, and identifies the body of a woman his friend was having sex with earlier in the film. Along the way we meet old friends who play piano at the orgy, a costume shop owner who sells his daughter into prostitution, and old friends who have sex with junkies that assure Cruise that everything is a okay. In the end, while shopping, Kidman tells Cruise there is only on thing left for them to do. With that “Eyes Wide Shut” ends with a one word exclamation. And this all takes place around Christmas.

It is hard to find time to be alone, and intimate, with one’s partner during the holidays. We all have much to do, in a very little time. We have school / church pageants. The shopping can take up morning, noon, and night. We might also find ourselves having to deal with the aftermath of an angry society of orgy havers. No matter how busy we are, couples should find the time to be together. To misquote Nicole Kidman at the end of ‘Eyes Wide Shut”, there is only one thing left for couples to do this holiday season and that is to cuddle.

RD

RD is the Head Editor for SeedSing. Looking for a good Christmas tune that has some sadness behind it? Check out Tina S write about “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”.

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