“Viet Con is already plural. You wouldn’t say Chineses.”
Ben Stiller has a reputation for having a hit-and-miss movie career. It seems like for every good movie he is in or directs “Dodge Ball: A True Underdog Story,” there is a “Duplex,” “Along Came Polly” or “The Heartbreak Kid.”
Despite his notoriety, popularity and humor, moviegoers took a gamble when Ben Stiller was attached to a movie. This was definitely the case when rumors swirled about that he was writing, directing, producing and starring in a film that would poke fun at the movie industry; it was no surprise critics were ready to pan the movie as another Stiller failure.
Then came “Tropic Thunder.”
Like “Singing in the Rain”- one of the first movies about the backstage lives of actors with large egos – “Bowfinger” and “America’s Sweethearts,” “Tropic Thunder” was supposed to be a movie within a movie that showed audiences what they already knew and mark the ending to a phenomenal blockbuster movie summer.
This movie goes a tad bit further.
Stiller is Tug Speedmen, a fallen action hero who took on the role as Jack in “Simple Jack” in the hopes of increasing his creditability as an actor. The movie failed miserably and he agreed to film “Tropic Thunder”-yes, the movie and the movie the characters are filming have the same title – thinking he could revive his career.
The only person standing in Tug’s way of reviving his career is successful method actor Kirk Lazarus, played by Robert Downey Jr. 2008 has been extremely kind to Downey.
A few years ago he was an uninsurable actor with a nasty alcohol and cocaine addiction, now you can call him Iron Man.
Always improving his skills as an actor, Lazarus dyes his skin brown to play the black Sgt. Osiris. Within the realm of the movie and in the real world, much controversy has been made about Downey playing Lazarus playing a black guy: “I’m a dude, playing a dude, disguised as another dude,” but moviegoers must also understand the nature of where Stiller is coming from and the problem of method actors.
Angelina Jolie has been cast twice in movies where the character has been either black, Fox from “Wanted” or a mixture of ethnicities, like Mariane Pearl, who Jolie portrayed in “A Mighty Heart,” is of Afro-Chinese-Cuban descent.
The frustrations of black actors, like the Asians between the 1920s until the 60s who were played by white actors, is spoken through rapper-slash-actor-slash-budding energy drink mogul Alpa Chino, the token rapper who seem to pop up in every movie, sans acting skills.
Alpa’s heartfelt comments on the state of black actors would be taken more seriously if he weren’t only in the movie to appease the black audience – the movie’s black audience, not us – and promote his new energy drink, Booty Sweat.
In a time where R-rated comedies are more raunchy than funny, “Tropic Thunder” will hopefully be the turning point for Stiller’s career.
Collins said she saw him near the Kappa Kappa Psi fraternity tree talking to some female
Categories:
Thunderstruck
August 21, 2008
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