Seth Rogen wants to teach you a lesson about movie marketing...
This is going to create some serious issues for many people, primarily because the brilliant marketing campaign for Observe and Report - especially the trailer - is selling it like a sequel to Paul Blart: Mall Cop, if not an outright spoof of it. Not surprisingly to those who are familiar with Hill, it's neither, and the references you may have heard to Taxi Driver are accurate. It's a crude, crass, crazy comedy starring a bipolar version of Seth Rogen's character from Pineapple Express, and it will chew up the unsuspecting viewer and violently spit them out.
They'll deserve it, of course, for not heeding the warning signs plastered all over this movie, starting with the name of its writer and director. Jody Hill hasn't sugarcoated anything about his style of humor: "I don’t find much in the comedies I’ve been seeing to get excited about. I’ll watch ‘City of God’ and laugh more...Comedy, for some reason, it’s the most dangerous cinema out there," he said in a recent interview. Danny McBride added, "“That’s what’s going to throw people. I think they’re going to be expecting punch lines, and instead they’re going to get a dark, crazy, awesome journey.” And the star of the movie, Seth Rogen?: "“It’s my own personal joke, to see how people freak out."
Sorry, Seth, but I suspect the joke is going to end up being on you guys, box-office gold not withstanding. Jody Hill's humor is, well, a little out there, and I highly doubt people will understand that Rogen is trying to make a departure into a different style of comedy. They'll hoot and holler about the drug use and alcoholism and feigned rape and the crazy minorities and the unforgettably graphic nudity and the bone-crushing and bloody violence and the overall tastelessness of everything. But they're not going to get the "joke" or take any meaning from the movie, and most of them will walk out afterward with a huge grin on their face, privately trying to understand how they could have been so hoodwinked.
The only thing worse than thinking that Hollywood treats us moviegoers like oblivious sheep is realizing that we are, in fact, oblivious sheep. We'll see anything, laugh at anything, pay for anything, and come back asking for more, never questioning... anything in the process.
Check your morals at the door for the guiltiest pleasure of the year...
When it comes to comedies, it's usually a good sign when the laughs start before the movie even begins. The fake trailers shown before Tropic Thunder tell you exactly what you're in for: a raunchy, ridiculously romp that makes you cringe as much as it makes you laugh out loud.
That's right. Against all odds, I found Tropic Thunder to be the funniest comedy of the summer - by far.
Realizing this, I searched for an explanation as the end credits rolled (which happen to be the best of any movie this year). "Third time must have been the charm," I said to my group, citing two recent duds. I thought I'd finally succumbed to idiotic comedy. Soon after, however, I realized that there was actually something different about Tropic Thunder, and it wasn't just the absolutely stunning production design.
Three self-absorbed movie stars are cast in "Tropic Thunder", a Vietnam war movie based on the memoirs of a hook-handed veteran (Nick Nolte). Leading man Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller, who co-wrote and also directed the movie) is pampered by his agent (Matthew McConaughey), and his last role was in a film that's widely considered to be the worst of all time. Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.) is an Academy Award-winning method actor whose preparation for roles would put Daniel Day-Lewis to shame. Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) is a drug-addled comedy star trying to separate himself from "The Fatties", his popular movie franchise about, well, a fat, flatulent family. Add a rookie director, an all-too-enthusiastic explosives expert (Danny McBride), and a nauseating studio head with a God complex (Tom Cruise), and "Tropic Thunder" appears to be doomed from the start. That is, of course, when a decision is made to shoot the film guerrilla style in the middle of the actual jungle and separate the stars from their security blankets. Unfortunately for the cast, there are actual guerrillas in this actual jungle.
If Step Brothers is the immature kid at the playground who steals a megaphone and curses in between making fart noises, Tropic Thunder is the best man giving his speech at a wedding, roasting the groom and telling the jokes that everyone will remember. Calling it a "smart" comedy would seem impossible to defend, but it's a label I'm tempted to use nonetheless. In the mold of Blazing Saddles, the dialogue and characters don't just toe the political correctness line, they stand right on it and stick their tongue out at you, making you feel silly that such a line exists in the first place. Beyond that, it deliciously satirizes Hollywood and skewers the careers of the very people it stars (speaking of which, this might be best work by an ensemble cast all year, and Cruise and Downey, Jr. are especially outstanding).
The potential for being offended is pretty high, but Tropic Thunder mostly covers its bases thanks to the sharp writing of Stiller and his co-writer, the actor Justin Theroux. The characters are, in fact, caricatures; the joke isn't on African-Americans or people with disabilities. It's on the actors. The outcry over the material in Tropic Thunder isn't altogether misguided, but it may be misinformed. People who see two movies a year and know nothing about Hollywood business culture will find it difficult to understand the satire (not to mention the hilarious references to so many other movies).
As much as this is true, however, there are still many scenes and lines that are just plain nasty. People may walk out of Tropic Thunder and head right back to the box office. Some will complain, some will buy tickets to the next screening. I did neither, but I did find myself surprised at how much I was laughing.
Killing time, waiting for a funnier movie...
Unfortunately, the Judd Apatow-produced Pineapple Express is too busy killing its own brain cells to do any damage to ours. Hardly written and awkwardly edited, it's an altogether disappointingly dumb movie, made worse by the fact that we know everybody involved has done better. I didn't say it wasn't funny - James Franco and especially Danny McBride (star of this year's The Foot Fist Way) are terrific in their roles as ditzy dealers, and Seth Rogen essentially channels himself as Ben Stone from Knocked Up. Seemingly every other line is ad-libbed and there's plenty of violent action to keep the momentum going. Boys 12 and under will love it.
So why isn't Pineapple Express a better movie? Three reasons: 1.) We're missing Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill; 2.) Apatow traditionally inserts a female outlier into each of his casts, (Christina Applegate in Anchorman, Catherine Keener in The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up, Mila Kunis in Forgetting Sarah Marshall), but this being one of the most macho Apatow movies yet, there is no such female presence, and the movie aches for someone to not only balance out the testosterone, but to bounce the best jokes off of; and 3.) Indie-drama director David Gordon Green (Snow Angels) is handcuffed by a moronic story and a skeleton script. His precious idea that he did a movie like Pineapple Express "to switch gears" is made meaningless by the fact that his involvement (at least appears to be) so limited. Can anyone point out for me the definitively Green aspects of this movie? Either way, any genuine attempt at making this movie something other than juvenile shenanigans would be yet another strike against Pineapple Express.I'm fully aware that most people's expectations for Pineapple Express will result in a self-fulfilling prophecy; many will consider it the funniest movie of the year so far. But you'll have a hard time convincing me the movie is better than the trailer, or that our standards for blockbuster comedies are not still way too low.
You might know the story by now: Sometime ago, Judd Apatow saw a little indie film called The Foot Fist Way, which played at Sundance 2006 but wasn't picked up for U.S. distribution. Apatow showed it to Adam McKay, who showed it to Will Ferrell (the two being, of course, the writers of the greatest American comedy of the decade, Anchorman) , who along with McKay decided that it would be the first film produced (here, "presented") by their newly formed production company.
As seems to be happening a lot lately, I first heard about Foot Fist a few months ago at Craig Kennedy's Living in Cinema. He ended up attending a press conference and recounted his experience here. The most important thing to take from it was that yes, it was made for $70,000 by three unassuming friends from North Carolina, and no, nobody had any idea how well it would play to people who aren't friends of Ferrell, McKay, or Apatow. People like me.
Danny McBride plays Fred Simmons, an outrageously arrogant Tae Kwan Do instructor who drives a circa-1985 Ferrari and always thinks his blonde bombshell of a wife, Suzie (Mary Jane Bostic), is cheating on him (she is). Simmons naively idolizes Chuck "The Truck" Wallace (Ben Best), a washed up, boozed up action movie star. For the most part, The Foot Fist Way is just footage of Simmons insulting his students and his wife while trying to get past the fact that Wallace isn't everything he'd hoped for in a role model (there's a little more plot than that, but let's just say you won't get lost).
Some of it is funny, most of it isn't. But statements like that really mean nothing since everyone has a different sense of humor. Even though you might laugh more than I did, though, you'll have trouble convincing me that the comedy was consistently there. There's too much training footage and not enough screen time for McBride, who has some classic moments when he's able to just sit down and let loose.
The Foot Fist Way will most likely live on as a cult favorite, and it's a fine start to what may end up being a decently long career for Danny McBride (he's in both Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder). It was made by three friends, it was shared among three friends, and I recommend watching it with three friends. Much of it you'll forget, but, depending on your humor, a few lines could be added to your "quotable-for-all-situations" list.
