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20
American Carol, An
xx
Australia
26
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24
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41
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43
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43
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49
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53
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61
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51
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43
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37
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35
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34
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64
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
39
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45
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58
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53
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36
Righteous Kill
53
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59
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19
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57
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49
Sex Drive
63
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49
Soul Men
36
Space Chimps
35
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
47
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60
Traitor
71
Tropic Thunder
56
Twilight
70
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
56
W.
93
WALL-E
27
Women, The
47
X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
56
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
93
WALL-E
82
Dark Knight, The
73
Kung Fu Panda
72
Ghost Town
71
Tropic Thunder
70
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
67
Bolt
65
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
64
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
63
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
63
Burn After Reading
61
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
60
Traitor
59
Role Models
58
Express, The
58
Quantum of Solace
58
City of Ember
57
Secret Life of Bees, The
57
Body of Lies
57
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
57
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
57
Flash of Genius
56
Twilight
56
W.
56
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
55
House Bunny, The
54
Get Smart
53
Quarantine
53
Rocker, The
53
Lucky Ones, The
52
Longshots, The
51
Mamma Mia!
49
Sex Drive
49
Family That Preys, The
49
Soul Men
47
Swing Vote
47
X-Files: I Want to Believe, The
46
Lakeview Terrace
45
Blindness
45
Pride and Glory
43
Eagle Eye
43
Meet Dave
43
Death Race
41
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
39
Nights in Rodanthe
37
Miracle at St. Anna
36
Space Chimps
36
Righteous Kill
36
Fly Me to the Moon
35
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
35
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
35
Mirrors
34
My Best Friend's Girl
31
Max Payne
28
Haunting of Molly Hartley. The
27
Women, The
26
Babylon A.D.
24
Bangkok Dangerous
20
American Carol, An
19
Saw V
15
Disaster Movie
15
College
xx
Australia
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

xx
All of Us
53
Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
57
Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
64
Appaloosa
69
Ashes of Time Redux
68
August Evening
xx
B.O.H.I.C.A.
62
Baghead
84
Ballast
54
Battle in Seattle
xx
Beer for My Horses
75
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
xx
Billy: The Early Years
66
Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
56
Bottle Shock
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
50
Breakfast with Scot
61
Brick Lane
43
Call and Response
62
Changeling
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
47
Choke
46
Choose Connor
84
Christmas Tale, A
41
Cthulhu
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
xx
Dostana
62
Duchess, The
46
Dukes, The
63
Eden
xx
Eden Lake
66
Elegy
46
Elephant King, The
80
Encounters at the End of the World
26
Everybody Wants to Be Italian
64
Fall, The
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
26
Filth and Wisdom
28
Fireproof
52
First Basket, The
67
Flow: For Love of Water
37
Forever Strong
69
Frontrunners
82
Frozen River
43
Gardens of the Night
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
54
Good Dick
30
Guitar, The
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
44
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31
Hounddog
27
House of the Sleeping Beauties
47
How About You
54
Humboldt County
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
40
Igor
64
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
78
I've Loved You So Long
63
JCVD
41
Johnny Got His Gun
xx
Just Buried
62
Kabluey
63
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
25
Lake City
78
Last Mistress, The
81
Let the Right One In
xx
Lower Learning
63
Man Named Pearl, A
89
Man on Wire
xx
Mary
xx
Matador, The
62
Mister Foe
84
Momma's Man
51
Morning Light
79
Moving Midway
33
My Name Is Bruce
59
Nights and Weekends
73
Obscene
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
40
Passengers
xx
Phoebe in Wonderland
55
Ping Pong Playa
75
Pool, The
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
82
Rachel Getting Married
56
Religulous
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
xx
Roadside Romeo
53
RocknRolla
56
Save Me
74
Secret, A
45
Shoot on Sight
57
Sixty Six
85
Slumdog Millionaire
56
Special
58
Splinter
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
67
Synecdoche, New York
82
Tell No One
64
Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
57
Towelhead
72
Transsiberian
83
Trouble the Water
43
Tru Loved
83
U2 3D
61
Universe of Keith Haring
84
Up the Yangtze
52
Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
79
Visitor, The
61
Wackness, The
59
We Are Wizards
55
What Just Happened?
66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
89
Man on Wire
85
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Up the Yangtze
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Ballast
84
Momma's Man
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Frozen River
82
Rachel Getting Married
81
Let the Right One In
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
80
Encounters at the End of the World
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
79
Moving Midway
79
Visitor, The
78
I've Loved You So Long
78
Last Mistress, The
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
75
Pool, The
75
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
74
Secret, A
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Obscene
73
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
72
Transsiberian
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Frontrunners
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
67
Synecdoche, New York
67
Flow: For Love of Water
66
Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
66
Elegy
66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
64
Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
64
Fall, The
64
Appaloosa
64
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
63
JCVD
63
Eden
63
Man Named Pearl, A
63
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
62
Changeling
62
Kabluey
62
Duchess, The
62
Mister Foe
62
Baghead
61
Wackness, The
61
Brick Lane
61
Universe of Keith Haring
59
Nights and Weekends
59
We Are Wizards
58
Splinter
57
Towelhead
57
Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, The
57
Sixty Six
56
Special
56
Save Me
56
Religulous
56
Bottle Shock
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
55
Ping Pong Playa
54
Humboldt County
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
53
Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
52
First Basket, The
52
Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
51
Morning Light
50
Breakfast with Scot
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
47
How About You
47
Choke
46
Choose Connor
46
Elephant King, The
46
Dukes, The
45
Shoot on Sight
44
Henry Poole is Here
43
Call and Response
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
41
Johnny Got His Gun
41
Cthulhu
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
40
Passengers
37
Forever Strong
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
33
My Name Is Bruce
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
30
Guitar, The
28
Fireproof
27
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Everybody Wants to Be Italian
26
Filth and Wisdom
25
Lake City
xx
Dostana
xx
Phoebe in Wonderland
xx
All of Us
xx
Matador, The
xx
Billy: The Early Years
xx
Roadside Romeo
xx
B.O.H.I.C.A.
xx
Eden Lake
xx
Just Buried
xx
Beer for My Horses
xx
Mary
xx
Lower Learning
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Tropic Thunder
DreamWorks Pictures (Paramount)
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for pervasive language including sexual references, violent content and drug material
Starring
Ben Stiller,
Jack Black,
Robert Downey Jr.,
Nick Nolte,
Steve Coogan,
Danny McBride, Bill Hader, Jay Baruchel, Matt Levin, Andrea De Oliveira, Reggie Lee,
Matthew McConaughey,
and
Tom Cruise
Tropic Thunder is 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. (Paramount Pictures)
| GENRE(S): |
Action
|
Comedy
|
War
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Ben Stiller
Justin Theroux
Etan Cohen
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Ben Stiller
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: November 18, 2008
Theatrical: August 13, 2008
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
107 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
San Francisco Chronicle
Peter Hartlaub
The movie is laugh-until-your-stomach-hurts hilarious.

100
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
It's raunchy, outspoken -- and also a smart and agile dissection of art, fame, and the chutzpah of big-budget productions.

90
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
An imperfect work of genius, a satire of Hollywood excess and vanity that dares to tread territory laden with minefields.

90
Newsweek
David Ansen
Tropic Thunder is the funniest movie of the summer--so funny, in fact, that you start laughing before the film itself has begun.

90
Slate
Dana Stevens
If you go see Tropic Thunder this weekend, don't be late. The four fake ads that open the movie are perhaps the apex of its considerable comic invention.

88
Premiere
Eric Kohn
From Downey Jr.'s purposely racist embodiment of African-American anachronisms to Black's scatological humor, everything in Tropic Thunder qualifies as satire, not spoof. It's an important distinction. Pauline Kael once noted that "unlike satire, spoofing has no serious objectives; it doesn't attack anything that anyone could take seriously; it has no cleansing power."

88
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
If you wait through the credits, you get one last joke in the fine print: The actors shot the whole movie in Hawaii, on the fabulously lush island of Kauai. So while they were shooting a story about indulged prima donnas, they were working themselves in one of the most tourist-friendly spots on Earth. You've gotta smile at that.

88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
When it's all over, you'll probably have the fondest memories of Robert Downey Jr.'s work. It's been a good year for him, this one coming after "Iron Man." He's back, big time.

88
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
A knockout of a comedy that keeps you laughing constantly. It's also killer smart, lacing combustible action with explosive gags.

83
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Tasha Robinson
Maybe Stiller just seems stilted because he's the only one here who isn't playing to the rafters.

80
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Stiller manages his movie nicely so that all actors get their share of the comic spotlight. Seldom does an ensemble comedy not contain a single weak character or performance as does this one.

80
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
The history of filmmakers skewering Hollywood's darker excesses is a long and rich one, from Billy Wilder through Robert Altman. With Tropic Thunder, a rude, crude, over-the-top satire about rude, crude, over-the-top action movies, Ben Stiller makes an ambitious and surprisingly effective bid to join those vaunted ranks.

78
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
Instead of entering the jungle to find the heart of darkness, Stiller (the director, co-star, and co-writer of Tropic Thunder) goes in to take aim at the Achilles heel of Hollywood: its utter pomposity and self-importance.

75
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Fairly lightweight, going after targets we can all agree deserve the needle. But there are five, six, seven gags you've never seen before -- real surprises- -- and the film deploys them smartly to keep you laughing and unsteady for the duration.

75
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Cruise is downright scary. It's the creepiest -- and most entertaining -- performance since his unforgettable appearance in that Scientology video.

75
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Biting as it tries to be, Tropic Thunder is mostly toothless. Its targets – Hollywood vanity, Hollywood tantrums – are easy hits.

75
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
Basically a mega-budget war movie that makes fun of mega-budget war movies.

75
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
At its best, Tropic Thunder wrings divine madness from wretched excess.

75
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
Despite its contradictions, the film stayed with me after I left the theater. It's frivolous. But it's also powerfully surreal.

75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
In the end Tropic Thunder is an expensive goof about an expensive goof, and the results are very impressive and fancy-looking.

75
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Downey is absurdly funny.

75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Tropic Thunder understands movies, understands the system in which they are created and, most of all, knows what it takes to make an audience roar with laughter.

75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Raunchy, raucous and riotously funny.

70
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
There is genuine humor and palpable satiric intent underneath the waves of unnerving bad taste and political incorrectness.

70
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
Although this satire of Hollywood inanity isn't the comic classic it could have been, Downey's gonzo performance is a must-see.

70
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
All over the map, but it's worth enduring the botched gags, formula plotting, and even the racism to marvel at the genius of Robert Downey Jr.

70
Time
Richard Corliss
Those opening trailers are hilarious and devastatingly acute, but the rest of Stiller's film could be more a deconstruction of comedy than a display of it. The brain gets the joke; the ribs are untickled.

70
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
To top everything off, Tom Cruise may just have resurrected his career with the role of Les Grossman.

67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Some of the writing is very smart, its strain of show-business satire is dead-on and often hilarious, and some of the performances have an insanity and intensity reminiscent of "Dr. Strangelove."

63
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
The frustratingly uneven comedy Tropic Thunder has moments of full-on, bust-a-gut hilarity, along with long stretches where you can hear the crickets chirping in the theater.

60
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Apart from startling, out-there comic turns by Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise, however, the antics here are pretty thin, redundant and one-note.

60
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Never lives up to the hilarity of the opening, partly because the large-scale production smothers the gags but mostly because those gags are so easy to smother.

60
LA Weekly
Scott Foundas
Like this summer's other slapstick cause célèbre, "Pineapple Express," it's a comedy with as high or higher a body count as the movies it purports to be parodying, and the problem isn't the violence per se but rather the fact that neither movie ever finds a satisfactory balance between tongue-in-cheek and guts-in-hand.

60
Empire
Dan Jolin
There are moments of comedy grandeur, but this isn't as consistently funny as you'd hope. Nevertheless, Downey Jr.'s Kirk Lazarus is instantly up there with the comedy greats.

50
Wall Street Journal
Joanne Kaufman
Like a dinner whose hors d'oeuvres are far more satisfying and well-composed than the slightly warmed-over main course. Among them are the inspired mock movie trailers and the fake ad that precede "Thunder's" opening credits.

50
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
The over-all effect is bizarre, daring you to be amused by something both brilliant and bristling with offense; if you sidle out at the end, feeling half guilty at what you just conspired in, then Stiller has trapped you precisely where he wants you.

50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
Tropic Thunder is an assault in the guise of a comedy – watching it is like getting mugged by a clown.

50
Village Voice
Robert Wilonsky
That's the thing about satire: It doesn't play past its expiration date. And everything about Tropic Thunder already feels antiquated.

50
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
A flashy, nasty, on-and-off funny and assaultive sendup of the film industry.


The average user rating for this movie is 6.8 (out of 10) based on 193 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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