Thunder and Laughter -- Very Little Laughter

Tropic Thunder may strike some as a better summer comedy than we usually get in August, but I for one would have liked it a lot more if so many of the film's elements -- the domineering studio boss, the greedy agent, the actor who's “funny” because he talks “like” an African-American, etc. -- had not seemed so familiar from past movies. Indeed, it's worth noting that when Rambo was parodied in the last Hot Shots movie back in 1993, it was popular for critics to denounce the movie for taking such an unimaginative approach to film parody. So what are we supposed to think when the same type of Rambo parody turns up more than a decade later?

I must confess that I cracked a smile or two during the middle of the movie -- especially when the film's rap star character started clashing with Robert Downey, Jr.'s method actor character -- but as a whole, the movie was not quite as funny as I expected it to be.

I will give the movie props for making Jack Black the token actor/drug addict and not you-know-who. But I also must admit that I've come to despise the sight of Ben Stiller in anything close to Mr. Furious mode*. And that's the mode he was in for most of the movie. However, even he had one genuinely funny moment.

So I'll forget the fact that for more than a moment or two, I really really really really wanted the bad guys in this movie -- the Asian drug dealers -- to win.

And I don't usually root for drug dealers...

* As you might guess, I really hated the flick -- Mystery Men -- in which Stiller played Mr. Furious. Some day I'll tell you why.