Real Review - Tropic Thunder

August 23, 2008

Well, it was neither that funny, nor that bad…At least to this sleepy, non-morning person, who attended an early showing. All of fifteen other people were in the audience, so I can’t really judge crowd reactions on this one. Problematic racial and disability ickiness, aside, it was all right.
I chuckled pretty consistently throughout, but three parts, in particular, got my loud annoying laugh, snorting included. As always, I will not divulge what those parts are, here.

That much talked-about cameo, that should have been funny, scared the crap out of me, instead….The arms and hands, y’all, the arms and the hands….*shudder* And please, a white guy hip-hop routine?…That dead horse is dust, now.

On the blackface… Downey, is as expected, very good. He brings the acting skills A-game to the self-important white-guy playing a black guy routine; husky voiced, bug-eyed, toughness included.

…Yes, the joke is on actors like Angelina Jolie, talking out of one side of her mouth about where the black princesses are for her little girl, but still playing The Fox and Mariane Pearl, in all her whiteness. There are however a few issues with methods behind the madness, y’all.

The white guy-in-blackface “cool factor” that has been pushed by the media, since we first heard about this movie, is just as jacked-up as those self-important actors Stiller lampoons. The fact that the “real black guy” did a lackluster job doesn’t help matters, either (in a role lampooning the taking of yet another acting job from real black actors’ hands).

It’s the reason why Chappelle quit, y’all. Folks were laughing at the shuffling and not the joke that shuffling is. Such is the case, here. Most of America just ain’t there enough to get it, yet. That goes for the joke on able-bodied actors taking on special roles to Oscar accolades, as well.

I can already see many a baseball-capped college guy doing their best “Black Downey Jr.” and Simple Jack impersonations. Yuck.

So, yes there are laughs here, but what was meant to be funny gets muddled, in translation. The cartoonishness of the “real” stereotypical locations and people, juxtaposed with all this doesn’t help matters, either.

Still, it gets the from me.