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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Tropic Thunder
DreamWorks Pictures (Paramount)
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for pervasive language including sexual references, violent content and drug material
Starring
Ben Stiller,
Jack Black,
Robert Downey Jr.,
Nick Nolte,
Steve Coogan,
Danny McBride, Bill Hader, Jay Baruchel, Matt Levin, Andrea De Oliveira, Reggie Lee,
Matthew McConaughey,
and
Tom Cruise
Tropic Thunder is an action comedy about a group of self-absorbed actors who set out to make the most expensive war film. After ballooning costs force the studio to cancel the movie, the frustrated director refuses to stop shooting, leading his cast into the jungles of Southeast Asia, where they encounter real bad guys. (Paramount Pictures)
| GENRE(S): |
Action
|
Comedy
|
War
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Ben Stiller
Justin Theroux
Etan Cohen
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Ben Stiller
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: November 18, 2008
Theatrical: August 13, 2008
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
107 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
San Francisco Chronicle
Peter Hartlaub
The movie is laugh-until-your-stomach-hurts hilarious.
100
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
It's raunchy, outspoken -- and also a smart and agile dissection of art, fame, and the chutzpah of big-budget productions.
90
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
An imperfect work of genius, a satire of Hollywood excess and vanity that dares to tread territory laden with minefields.
90
Newsweek
David Ansen
Tropic Thunder is the funniest movie of the summer--so funny, in fact, that you start laughing before the film itself has begun.
90
Slate
Dana Stevens
If you go see Tropic Thunder this weekend, don't be late. The four fake ads that open the movie are perhaps the apex of its considerable comic invention.
88
Premiere
Eric Kohn
From Downey Jr.'s purposely racist embodiment of African-American anachronisms to Black's scatological humor, everything in Tropic Thunder qualifies as satire, not spoof. It's an important distinction. Pauline Kael once noted that "unlike satire, spoofing has no serious objectives; it doesn't attack anything that anyone could take seriously; it has no cleansing power."
88
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
If you wait through the credits, you get one last joke in the fine print: The actors shot the whole movie in Hawaii, on the fabulously lush island of Kauai. So while they were shooting a story about indulged prima donnas, they were working themselves in one of the most tourist-friendly spots on Earth. You've gotta smile at that.
88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
When it's all over, you'll probably have the fondest memories of Robert Downey Jr.'s work. It's been a good year for him, this one coming after "Iron Man." He's back, big time.
88
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
A knockout of a comedy that keeps you laughing constantly. It's also killer smart, lacing combustible action with explosive gags.
83
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Tasha Robinson
Maybe Stiller just seems stilted because he's the only one here who isn't playing to the rafters.
80
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Stiller manages his movie nicely so that all actors get their share of the comic spotlight. Seldom does an ensemble comedy not contain a single weak character or performance as does this one.
80
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
The history of filmmakers skewering Hollywood's darker excesses is a long and rich one, from Billy Wilder through Robert Altman. With Tropic Thunder, a rude, crude, over-the-top satire about rude, crude, over-the-top action movies, Ben Stiller makes an ambitious and surprisingly effective bid to join those vaunted ranks.
78
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
Instead of entering the jungle to find the heart of darkness, Stiller (the director, co-star, and co-writer of Tropic Thunder) goes in to take aim at the Achilles heel of Hollywood: its utter pomposity and self-importance.
75
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Fairly lightweight, going after targets we can all agree deserve the needle. But there are five, six, seven gags you've never seen before -- real surprises- -- and the film deploys them smartly to keep you laughing and unsteady for the duration.
75
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Cruise is downright scary. It's the creepiest -- and most entertaining -- performance since his unforgettable appearance in that Scientology video.
75
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Biting as it tries to be, Tropic Thunder is mostly toothless. Its targets – Hollywood vanity, Hollywood tantrums – are easy hits.
75
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
Basically a mega-budget war movie that makes fun of mega-budget war movies.
75
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
At its best, Tropic Thunder wrings divine madness from wretched excess.
75
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
Despite its contradictions, the film stayed with me after I left the theater. It's frivolous. But it's also powerfully surreal.
75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
In the end Tropic Thunder is an expensive goof about an expensive goof, and the results are very impressive and fancy-looking.
75
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Downey is absurdly funny.
75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Tropic Thunder understands movies, understands the system in which they are created and, most of all, knows what it takes to make an audience roar with laughter.
75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Raunchy, raucous and riotously funny.
70
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
There is genuine humor and palpable satiric intent underneath the waves of unnerving bad taste and political incorrectness.
70
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
Although this satire of Hollywood inanity isn't the comic classic it could have been, Downey's gonzo performance is a must-see.
70
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
All over the map, but it's worth enduring the botched gags, formula plotting, and even the racism to marvel at the genius of Robert Downey Jr.
70
Time
Richard Corliss
Those opening trailers are hilarious and devastatingly acute, but the rest of Stiller's film could be more a deconstruction of comedy than a display of it. The brain gets the joke; the ribs are untickled.
70
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
To top everything off, Tom Cruise may just have resurrected his career with the role of Les Grossman.
67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Some of the writing is very smart, its strain of show-business satire is dead-on and often hilarious, and some of the performances have an insanity and intensity reminiscent of "Dr. Strangelove."
63
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
The frustratingly uneven comedy Tropic Thunder has moments of full-on, bust-a-gut hilarity, along with long stretches where you can hear the crickets chirping in the theater.
60
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Apart from startling, out-there comic turns by Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise, however, the antics here are pretty thin, redundant and one-note.
60
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Never lives up to the hilarity of the opening, partly because the large-scale production smothers the gags but mostly because those gags are so easy to smother.
60
LA Weekly
Scott Foundas
Like this summer's other slapstick cause célèbre, "Pineapple Express," it's a comedy with as high or higher a body count as the movies it purports to be parodying, and the problem isn't the violence per se but rather the fact that neither movie ever finds a satisfactory balance between tongue-in-cheek and guts-in-hand.
60
Empire
Dan Jolin
There are moments of comedy grandeur, but this isn't as consistently funny as you'd hope. Nevertheless, Downey Jr.'s Kirk Lazarus is instantly up there with the comedy greats.
50
Wall Street Journal
Joanne Kaufman
Like a dinner whose hors d'oeuvres are far more satisfying and well-composed than the slightly warmed-over main course. Among them are the inspired mock movie trailers and the fake ad that precede "Thunder's" opening credits.
50
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
The over-all effect is bizarre, daring you to be amused by something both brilliant and bristling with offense; if you sidle out at the end, feeling half guilty at what you just conspired in, then Stiller has trapped you precisely where he wants you.
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
Tropic Thunder is an assault in the guise of a comedy – watching it is like getting mugged by a clown.
50
Village Voice
Robert Wilonsky
That's the thing about satire: It doesn't play past its expiration date. And everything about Tropic Thunder already feels antiquated.
50
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
A flashy, nasty, on-and-off funny and assaultive sendup of the film industry.
 The average user rating for this movie is 6.6 (out of 10) based on 205 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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