Monday, August 25, 2008

Review : Tropic Thunder

Checkout at the hotel in LA was at noon, and our flight was at 8:30 so some of had some time to kill Saturday. There was a theater across the street from the hotel, so Nick, Keith, Simon and I walked over to check out a matinee showing of Tropic Thunder to help wile away the afternoon.

I've seen a lot of movies. I've been in a lot of movie theaters. I've seen movies at Mann's Chinese and the Arclight. I've seen world premieres at the Hollywood Bowl. I've been to drive-ins. I've seen movies on big screens. I've seen movies on small screens. I have never, never, in my life been in a movie theater as awful as the one that we saw this movie in. Simon and I were going to get popcorn until Keith pointed out the, sadly full, glue roach traps just out of sight around a corner in the lobby. I was wearing sandals and I really didn't want to put my feet on the floor while we were watching the movie. The carpet was dirty. The seats were threadbare. Bad screen, bad sound. It was just terrible.

Which is too bad, because Tropic Thunder is really, really funny. It does a pretty good job of taking the piss out of Hollywood in general, an actors in particular. Robert Downey is brilliant as the melanin-challenged Australian, but Tom Cruise is just as good as the studio exec. The two of them are almost good enough to make me forget that I hate Ben Stiller. Worth seeing. I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and round up to


Four Stars.

No comments:

Post a Comment