Just came back from watching tropic thunder with my colleagues, and i must say i am truly disappointed. It was a cross of 21 and Austin Powers 3, dodgy comparisons but let me explain. They had a perfect premise for LOL and if you didn’t already know, its about three actors (played by three actors) shooting a war film and was accidentally put into a real war scenario. Things started of real fun, and how wouldnt it be with these 3 awesome comedy actors put together? But when the freshness of the premise starts wearing out…it just became mediocre. They couldn’t maintain the momentum throughout the whole 120 minutes (aka 21) and it was disappointing because the first half an hour or so generated a generous ammount of giggles.
Another thing that was completely unnecessary was the huge ammount of cameos. I never knew what was the deal with cameos as they rarely add anything to the movie. I can only recall very few instances where they were pretty good most. On the top of my head i would say recently is Jonah Hill in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the babes (Elisha Cuthbert, Elizabeth Shannon etc.) in Love Actually. In these cases the actor/actresses actually fit the role or fits into the right context. Really, i am not against cameos but this movie really looks like they concentrated too much into including them rather than improving the script etc. The first movie that pops into mind when mentioning this is obviously AUSTIN POWERS 3. (if you haven’t already guessed it)
The final note is about the lameness about the movie. There’s only so much lameness a comedy can take, and this movie crossed that line. With so many talented actors, i wouldn’t expect lameness to carry this movie but it was what they did (which contributed to the boringness at the second half on the movie). It’s ironic too that **SPOILERS…..kinda….*** in one scene Robert Downey’s character said “You should never act purely retarded in a movie, only mostly retarted” (referring the other chars such as Forrest Gump who won Oscars) because that’s what i would describe how they acted towards the end of the movie – purely retarded.
