Tropic Thunder (Unrated Director's Cut + BD Live) [Blu-ray]

Tropic Thunder (Unrated Director's Cut + BD Live) [Blu-ray]
by Ben Stiller

Tropic Thunder (Unrated Director's Cut + BD Live) [Blu-ray]

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Blu-ray details

Actor: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Nick Nolte, Robert Downey Jr., Steve Coogan
Director: Ben Stiller
Brand: Paramount
Producer: Brian Taylor
Producer: Eric McLeod
Producer: Justin Theroux
Writer: Justin Theroux
Writer: Etan Cohen
Blu-ray: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2008-11-18
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Dreamworks Video

Blu-ray Reviews of Tropic Thunder (Unrated Director's Cut + BD Live) [Blu-ray]

Blu-ray Review: A GREAT CRAZY Movie
Summary: 4 Stars

I have been writing reviews for movies since 1970, back when I was on my college newspaper. I have seen some great movies, and by "great movies," I mean movies like CASABLANCA, GONE WITH THE WIND and CITIZEN KANE. TROPIC THUNDER isn't in their league, but it is a GREAT movie, nonetheless. Funny on one level. Crude on another. A satire about the movie industry on still another level. It's like APOCALYPSE NOW and NETWORK rolled together for the 21st Century.

The acting centers around excellent performances by Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Jay Barachel, and Brandon T. Jackson as solders in a Vietnam War movie who, due to cost overruns (after 5 days the movie is already one month behind schedule) are taken by the director to the jungles of Vietnam where it is to be shot "gorilla" style, ala BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

While all of the performances, including the strong support performances by Danny R. McBride and Nick Nolte, are terrific, Robert Downey Jr.'s performance as five-time Oscar Award winning Australian actor Kirk Lasarus is phenomenal. Lasarus is so immersed in his craft that he undergoes a pigmentation alteration procedure operation to make him look like an African-American, and true to his craft, he declares that he remains in character until the DVD commentary is finished (which he actually did, as you will discover if you listen to the actor's commentary).

In addition to outstanding comic scenes, action scenes, and satirical scenes, the interplay between black actor Brando T. Jackson as Alpa Chino and Robert Downey Jr., as Lasurus, is hilarious, but frankly the interplay between all of the actors is outstanding. The screenplay written by Stiller, Justin Theroux and Ethan Cohen should win an Oscar.

SPOILER ALERT FOR JUST THIS PARAGRAPH: If there is any weakness in the Blu-Ray version, and the two-disk "Director's Cut" (Tropic Thunder) (Unrated Director's Cut) DVD's by director Ben Stiller, is that the extra 14 minutes in the "Director's Cut" does not really add much to the movie. In comparing the two versions, you see an extra snippet here and there, such as when Ben Stiller is asked by his agent Rick Peck, played terrifically by Matthew McConaughey, how the adoption is going, and we see Stiller looking for five-seconds at a 2-year old Vietnam boy with a real ninja knife in his hands, guarded by two burly bodyguards. Or, an actor saying something in one version, and something else in the other version (as when Stiller says to Downey in the opening scene in the director's cut, "When we get back, I'm going to teach you how to juggle," versus "When we get back, I'm going to teach you how to play the piano" in the R-rated version.) In the first instance, the 5-second glance at the adopted boy, if added to the movie would have made the scene at the end showing Stiller going back to stay with the boy even funnier. In the second instance, it is a toss-up as to which one is funnier. END OF SPOILER ALERT.

When these "Director's Versions" first cropped-up, it was usually because the studio wanted the movie a certain length and cuts had to be made and good scenes deleted. However, now it just seems the "Director's Version" is used as another opportunity to sell the same movie to the public. To me, and Director Ben Stiller noted several times in the "Director's Version" commentary, these "extras" were cut to make the theater version tighter, and this shows because the theater version flows better. I wish we could have had both version on the Blu-Ray disc in addition to the great "extras."

BTW, I found it interesting that at a local store I noticed the "R-Rated Version" could not be purchased by anyone under 17, but the "Director's Version" could be bought by anyone, regardless of age.

Speaking of the actor's commentary that accompanies all of the DVD versions, it is terrific, especially Robert Downey Jr. as he remains in character during his comments about the movie, just as he said he does in the movie dialogue. The Blu-Ray disc has a few more extras than the double DVD version for approximately the same price, but its picture is so much better, so I would recommend the Blu-Ray version over the double DVD version if you have both types of players.

I would be remiss to not mention one other performance, and that is the one given by Tom Cruise as the megalomaniac Hollywood producer. His make-up was so good that in the theater when I saw the movie, I did not recognize that it was Tom Cruise playing the part.

TROPIC THUNDER is not a movie for everyone, but if heavy doses of profanity and some grotesque scenes are not too upsetting, you will find it very funny and maybe even thought provoking. Whatever the case, it provides the viewer with some great water cooler fodder.

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Description of Tropic Thunder (Unrated Director's Cut + BD Live) [Blu-ray]

Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. lead an ensemble cast in ?Tropic Thunder,? 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.

It's not really a knock to say that nothing in Tropic Thunder is funnier than its first five minutes, so sly that--especially for people watching in theaters--you don't realize right away they are the opening minutes of the movie. This outrageous comedy begins with a series of fake previews, each introducing one of the main characters in the film-proper (not that there's anything proper about this film) and each bearing the familiar logo of a different motion picture studio: Universal, DreamWorks SKG, et al. Such playing fast and loose with corporate talismans verges on sacrilege, but it's an index of how much le tout Tinseltown endorses the movie as a demented valentine to itself. The premise is that the cast of a would-be "Son of Rambo" movie shooting in some Southeast Asian jungle get into a real shooting war with drug-smuggling montagnards. Don't ask--though the movie does have an answer--why such highly paid, usually ultra-pampered personnel as superhero Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), Mozart of fart comedy Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), hip-hop artist Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), and five-time Oscar-winner Kirk Lazarus from Aus-try-leeah (Robert Downey Jr.) should be running through the jungle unattended and very vulnerable. It matters only that the real-life cast has a high time kidding their own profession and flexing their comedic muscles. Bonus points go to Stiller for co-writing the script (with Justin Theroux) and directing, and to Downey, brilliant as a white actor surgically turned black actor for his role and utterly committed to staying in character no matter what ("I don't drop character till I done the DVD commentary").

Be warned: The movie, too, is committed--to being an equal-opportunity offender. Its political incorrectness extends not only to Lazarus's black-like-me posturing but also Speedman's recent, Sean Penn?style Oscar bid playing a cognitively challenged farmboy--or, in Lazarus's deathless phrase, "going the full retard." Others in the cast include Steve Coogan as a director out of his depth, Nick Nolte as the Viet-vet novelist whose book inspired the film-within-the-film, Matthew McConaughey as Speedman's sun-blissed agent back home, and Tom Cruise--bald, fat-suited, and profane--as an epically repulsive studio head. Two hours running time is a mite excessive, but otherwise, what's not to like? --Richard T. Jameson

Stills from Tropic Thunder (Click for larger image)

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