Monday, May 10, 2010

Watch Movies Online Like Tropic Thunder

By Sidney Lancaster

If you haven't seen Tropic Thunder yet, you probably want to give it a try next time you're ready to watch movies online and you want to see a good comedy. We know, we know, Ben Stiller has been making a lot of awful movies lately, and it seems like Tropic Thunder might be just another to throw onto that heap, but the fact is, it's really one of the best movies Stiller has been involved in.

The movie is really all about spoofing modern Hollywood culture and phoniness and the concept of what's real and what's not keeps recurring throughout the film. This is made clear in the opening where we see a series of fake trailers showing what sort of films the main characters usually star in. The best of these is probably Jack Black using fat suits to spoof Eddie Murphy's recent films.

As you probably know from the trailers, the film follows a group of actors starring in a Vietnam war film. When they get taken out into the jungle for some hardcore training to get into character, they wind up getting more than they bargained for, being put into a situation where they're actually being shot at and forced to rely on each other to survive.

The theme of the film is one of honesty, the movie is about phoniness and sincerity, and all of the characters have to come to terms with who they are in life. While it's a comedy, you find yourself actually rooting for these characters to see things through, to succeed in their internal struggles and find out who they are and their place in the universe.

It's a very funny film, too, of course, but it's also a moving and dramatic film, as well as an exciting one. The movie is really more than you'd expect from Ben Stiller these days, who seems content to just collect big paychecks for big budget movies with low mileage jokes. This one is actually one of his very best, though.

The action in the film is actually pretty good. There's a whole new dynamic you've probably never seen before, in that the actors are actually firing prop guns with blank rounds, while the bad guys are firing live rounds. This is just another layer of falseness to the massive facade that the movie focuses on.

Look out for a really, really great cameo about a third of the way in. You won't be able to guess who it is right away, so don't look at the imdb page, either, or you may spoil one of the biggest laughs in the film.

So the movie is funny, moving, dramatic, exciting and really well made. Yes, Ben Stiller has been striking out in recent years, but this movie more than makes up for all of his flops. Definitely give it a watch if you haven't seen it yet.

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