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Tropic Thunder
Trailer . IMDB
Very funny and very frivilous.... More interesting than whether it causes offense is how carefully, or carelessly, Stiller and company navigate a minefield of stereotypes. They're walking on eggshells one minute and riding roughshod the next.
Robert Davis
Daily Plastic
As much as Downey sends up the Shafts and Super Flys, he respects the beauty and weight and potency of the archetype. He drops his voice an octave (at least) and what comes out is gorgeous.
David Edelstein
New York Magazine
All the brouhaha over Downey's putative blackface schtick (not to mention the "concern" evinced by certain representatives of the disabled, who, truth to tell, are missing a certain point but will nonetheless be vilified by Thunder's admirers for the far less nuanced reason that they're just not hip enough to get the movie's awesomeness ...) has helped cover the fact that Cruise's Grossman, with his simian posture, scraggly beard, unsightly tufts of chest hair, pouchlike paunch, and overall vileness, is a fairly vicious anti-semitic caricature.
Glenn Kenny
The Auteurs' Notebook
More vexing is the case of Robert Downey, Jr., whose performance is conducted almost entirely in blackface. This is, to say the least, a controversial move, but Stiller and his team are wise to any accusations, carefully framing the insult in cooling ironies.... The over-all effect is bizarre, daring you to be amused by something both brilliant and bristling with offense.
Anthony Lane
The New Yorker
... ultimately just another movie about moviemaking, better than some (David Mamet's State and Main comes to mind), not as good as others (The Player, S.O.B.), occasionally willing to bite the hand that feeds it but more often content to merely teethe.
Scott Foundas
LA Weekly
For all its pleasures, Tropic Thunder feels like a missed opportunity. Its occasional obscurantism notwithstanding, Stiller's comedy has always been angled for mass appeal (it's always been more Mad magazine than Albert Brooks in that way).
Elbert Ventura
Reverse Shot
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