Movie Tuesdays!

We went to see Tropic Thunder this weekend, mainly due to good reviews and I gotta say, I wasn't as impressed as I thought I would be.

For those of you who don't know, Tropic Thunder is about a movie within a movie. There are five stars, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr, Brandon T. Jackson, and Jay Baruchel (of Undeclared, of course) who go to Vietnam to make a movie about the Vietnam War. They end up alone in the rainforest with no one to help them and are left to fend for themselves.

What the movie really does well is show how full of themselves these actors are. They are all self-absorbed and mostly unpleasent people. Ben Stiller plays an action star who is no longer as popular as he once was. Jack Black is a heroin addicted star known only for his roles in fart movies. Robert Downey Jr is a method actor who is so method that he dyes his skin black to get a role in this movie and almost never breaks character. Brandon T Jackson is a rapper-turned-actor who spends much of the movie trying to sell his energy drink, "Booty Sweat". Jay Baruchel is the best (and most likable) of the bunch as a young, new actor (no one knows his name) who is intelligent and not yet full of himself.

While this movie was fun, it was not incredible. There were a few slow parts, many jokes taken too far, and a story that was somewhat forgetable and/or predictable. Tom Cruise, as the movie exec wasn't as mind-blowing as the critics would have you believe. He was funny, but quite creepy looking.

This should have been a Netflixed movie for me, not a theater movie. It was the best Ben Stiller movie in a while, however, and Mrs Titan (as well as myself) was amazed that that really was Robert Downey Jr. It was also great to see Danny McBride again so soon after Pineapple Express. It was fun, but nothing worth swooning over. Rent it!