Seitz. Writes.

Apparently there haven’t been too many big releases lately, so I’m going back a little ways to bring you this week’s installment of “I Hate Peter Travers.” For once, I’m also going to do a movie that not only did I see, but also enjoyed.

Tropic Thunder was actually one of my favorite movies of last year. I went into it with fairly low expectations, and came out more than pleased. The whole concept sounded dumb from the start, and I pretty much expected that Robert Downey Jr.’s “blackface” role was going to be the best part, but I also figured that it wasn’t going to stay funny for long.

But this isn’t about me, it’s about our friend Peter Travers. Here’s the review. Hilarity, or at least an attempt at it, will follow after the jump.

Think of all the ways you can hurt yourself laughing, as in fall down, split your sides, bust a gut, blow your mind. You get it all in Tropic Thunder, a knockout of a comedy that keeps you laughing constantly.

Honestly, this ought to stand alone. Someday, Peter Travers will die, and I can only hope that this will be read at his funeral. But I’m actually worried about him. I mean,  I understand that people use these phrases to describe our appreciation of comedy, but I didn’t think anyone took them seriously until now. And “blow your mind”? I thought that simply referred to the amount of illicit substances one would need to have coursing through their veins to ever agree with Peter Travers.

It’s also killer smart, lacing combustible action with explosive gags.

Hey Barack Obama, I voted for you and applied for a job with your transition team. Is there something you can do about this? Can I at least be secretary of media, charged with assuring the children of this fine nation that just because Rolling Stone gives this man money, you should never, ever mix metaphors (I use that term loosely, considering that Peter still hasn’t mastered analogies) like this?

But seriously, think about this sentence. I actually get “killer smart,” assuming that “killer” was the only modifier available for smart. But let’s talk about “combustible.” This word would imply that the action is simply able to explode. Combustible is actually a fairly boring and pedestrian word, all things considered. On the other hand, “explosive gags”  is a very specific statement. Since I saw this movie, I can attest that there was, in fact, one explosive gag early on. It involved Ben Stiller losing his hands. After that, I think all of the “gags” revolved around RDJ’s makeup and cocaine.

Stiller took flak for the other three movies he’s directed: 1994′s Reality Bites was allegedly too soft, 1996′s The Cable Guy too dark, 2001′s Zoolander too airy-fairy.

What’s that sound? Why, it’s time for Peter Travers to prove that he knows how to use imdb.

Confession: I liked them all.

Someday, humanity will recognize the amazing archival power of the internet. Peter Travers spent half of his Zoolander review talking about 9/11, then gives the movie some pretty meaningless praise. The Cable Guy review (which doesn’t actually carry a Peter Travers byline, but reads like his work) is actually a pretty negative review. And Peter didn’t review Reality Bites.

Try to picture Apocalypse Now as conceived by Borat. The man from Kazakhstan doesn’t appear in Tropic Thunder, but damn near everyone else does.

Okay, I understand the need for comparisons when writing reviews. It’s usually the easiest way to make your audience picture something that you’re writing about, and it’s one of the few techniques that actually works well in most situations. But this is just an abyssmal failure. I can understand the Apocalypse Now reference, in that it’s a Vietnam movie and there are similar plot elements, but there is almost no connection between Borat and Tropic Thunder, which is made all the more clear by the fact that Peter Travers says there’s no connection right afterwards.

But even if you allow that Borat was a funny movie and Apocalypse Now was a vietnam movie, equalling a funny Vietnam movie, the styles of comedy are comepletely different.

And whoever the guy is who plays the short, fat, bald, f-bomb-dropping studio chief, Les Grossman, has a big future. Spoiler alert: It’s Tom Cruise

I clearly am not an expert on comedy, but I’m pretty sure there’s a rule that says that if your joke needs an explanation, it probably isn’t funny. Especially if your delivery sounds like an overexcited first grader who can’t wait to be the first one to answer the question.

Stiller excels as Tugg Speedman, a muscled superstar who has sequelized his franchise as the brawny Scorcher more often than Stallone has dragged Rambo back to the box-office well...Taking the role of the Rambo-esque John “Four Leaf” Tayback in Tropic Thunder — the name of the film within the film — can be Tugg’s ticket to legit

I’m just confused by these Rambo references. Couldn’t he have just as easily used Rocky or William Shatner for the first one, rather than setting up this weird parallel of Rambo being both a symbol of hollywood’s failures and as a role that could be considered legit?

We even see a trailer for a Fatties flick featuring Black demonstrating a Kama Sutra of flatulence positions.

I’ve finally found a proper description for Peter Travers writing.

This is Black’s zaniest performance since School of Rock, and he makes Jeff’s turn as a gunnery sarge look convincing as well. Nice touch.

Back to the archives. School of Rock came out in 2003. Since then, Black starred in Nacho Libre, where Peter Travers said he was “filled to bursting with comic helium” and “willing to use everything from indecent exposure to an outrageous Mexican accent to get a laugh.”  He also starred in Be Kind Rewind, in which Peter Traver said he “indulges in facial contortions that would shame a caffeinated cartoon” (side hate: That Be Kind Rewind review contains this gem “Without turning Luddite (named after the 1811 British social movement that opposed all technological progress), Gondry is taking measure of what we’ve lost in the name of progress.” My brain literally stopped working for a few seconds when I read that.) I’m not saying those roles were more zany than School of Rock, but being zany is what Jack Black is known for. There’s no reason to talk about it anymore.

That, and THE WHOLE POINT OF THE MOVIE WAS THAT THE ACTORS WEREN’T CONVINCING IN THEIR ROLES.

Downey has a ball with the role, and his explanation to Stiller about the dangers of going “full retard” if you want to win an Oscar belongs in a comedy time capsule.

Today, I actually agree with a Peter Travers on a point. That was one of the single funniest parts of the movie, and is pretty much the sinlge most memorable thing about it. Irony will implode if Downey wins the Oscar this year.

Downey is so off-the-charts hilarious that you want to stand up and cheer.

And I’m back to hating. Nobody stands up to cheer in a movie unless it’s Rocky IV. What world does this man live in where these strange behaviors are acceptable?

The low-comic ensemble acting in Tropic Thunder is of the highest caliber.

I’m lost. I think this is a compliment, albeit a very backhanded one, but what does he mean by “low-comic”? He just spent all of the review talking about how smart and funny everyone is, and they’re low-comic? Yeah, there was some kind of cheap humor in the movie, but it was a pretty intelligent film too.

Is it too much? Sometimes. Tropic Thunder can be silly, shallow and way too inside.

I’m going to have to start tracking weird sexual undertones in these reviews. I would have thought that the literal meanings of “shallow” and “way too inside” should prevent them from being used side by side, but then I don’t work for Rolling Stone

Plus, there is a shrewd method to Stiller’s madness. He knows firsthand that Hollywood is a microcosm for a world that has swallowed its own marketing strategy.

Hollywood is not a microcosm for anything, and only someone who spends their life reviewing movies and writing about how you could hurt yourself laughing would ever think that. Not to mention the fact that Peter Travers swallows marketing campaigns like Linda Lovelace.

Yet he’s caught up, as we are, in the fantasies it’s selling. We enter this bizarro fun house giggling at the clowns on view, but we exit — and here’s the wow factor — laughing at ourselves.

Is anyone else insulted that Peter Travers tries to speak for “us”?  I think I’ve hammered the point home by now that Peter Travers is delusionally caught up in Marketing, so I’ll leave that side alone. I don’t think this movie was supposed to reflect on any normal person. It’s making fun of Hollywood, actors, acting and ever other aspect of the movie business. Explain to me why someone is supposed to laugh at themselves after watching this film? I’m waiting.

Tags: A Kama Sutra of Flatulence Position, FJM Style, I Hate Peter Travers, Jounralism Commentary, Movies, Tropic Thunder
Filed under: Commentary, Journalism