Tropic Thunder, round 1.

Newsweek's David Ansen has seen Tropic Thunder and raves: "This raucous, low-down commentary on Hollywood filmmaking, war movies, narcissistic actors and the thin line between makebelieve and reality is the most giddily entertaining, wickedly smart and cinematically satisfying comedy in a season overloaded with yuk-'em-ups. If there's any justice, Thunder (which opens Aug 13) should be the breakthrough moment for [Ben] Stiller as a director." A career overview and profile follow.

For Variety's Todd McCarthy, "Tropic Thunder undeniably provokes quite a few laughs, but of the most hollow kind. Ben Stiller's star-laden farce makes every effort to be outrageous as it pokes knowing fun at a troupe of spoiled, self-centered actors who get more than they bargained for making a Rambo-like rescue drama in Southeast Asia. Apart from startling, out-there comic turns by Robert Downey Jr and Tom Cruise, however, the antics here are pretty thin, redundant and one-note."

"After a summer devoted to superheroes - indeed, Stiller's co-stars Robert Downey Jr and Jack Black played superheroes in Iron Man and Kung Fu Panda - how gratifying it is to experience a movie taking the mickey out of super-impossible heroics," writes the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt. "It's by no means a perfect comedy - nor would you want it to be. Gags and stunts are all over the place, yet the film does de-Stiller-erize the essence of contemporary movie comedy even as it has fun with outrageously crude jokes."

John Hazelton, writing for Screen, figures the movie "was probably more fun to make than it ultimately is to watch.... [W]hile Stiller tries to stop it from becoming a simple genre spoof, it does parody war classics including Platoon, Apocalypse Now and Saving Private Ryan. It's more successful, though, as an industry satire, poking fun at self-involved actors, grovelling agents, ranting moguls and even DVD format wars. The danger, of course, is that the in-jokes will be lost on audiences outside Los Angeles and other industry centres."

Paramount faces "the delicate task of selling what may be the raunchiest comedy yet in a summer that has seen more than its share," reports Michael Cieply in the New York Times. Jeffrey Wells comments: "The film isn't raunchy at all; it's merely extreme."

Posted by dwhudson at August 3, 2008 5:05 AM