Tropic Thunder (2008)

Director: Ben Stiller

Cast: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Cruise

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. What else was there to do in the summer of 2008 but see whatever Robert Downey Jr. movie was coming down the pike?

Did I Like It: At the core, its a pretty funny comedy that manages to actually channel the scope and energy of the movies—chief among them Apocalypse Now (1979) and Hearts of Darkness (1991) with more than a little bit of Platoon (1986) thrown in—it mocks.

Obviously, there’s going to be some things in the film that don’t age well. The lengths to which Kirk Lazarus (Downey Jr.) tries to get into the head of Lincoln Osiris is not something that would pass the smell test today. Tugg Speedman’s (Stiller) futile attempt to reach for respectability in Simple Jack got a fair amount of guff at the time of release. But both of those elements are more about the foolishness of movie actors blindly reaching for those portrayals without really thinking about the limits of their own believability and good sense.

While whispers still exist that Les Grossman (Cruise) will get his own spin-off film one day (it doesn’t really feel like the kind of film that Cruise could possibly be talked into anymore; then again, it didn’t really feel like that back then, either), I’d submit that his is the character which ages most poorly. He is a riff on Hollywood assholes like Scott Rudin and Harvey Weinstein, but never is he played as a fool. Quite to the contrary, he’s a brash villain one can’t help but wish they were more like. He’s an ugly little man who has commanded every room he’s entered since the 80s. The film loves him in all his reprehensibility, and I admit I even like him.

But I probably shouldn’t.

High Fidelity (2000)

Director: Stephen Frears

Cast: John Cusack, Jack Black, Lisa Bonet, Iben Hjelje

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, well. Where does one begin with a question like that? I’m not entirely sure just how many times I saw this movie in the spring of 2003 (for reasons) but I do know it was a lot. Change popular music to movies, and I felt a lot like Rob Gordon there for a little bit about twenty years back.

Did I Like It: We’re a different world now. I’ve changed, and even Rob Gordon (Cusack) has changed*. Can a movie which lived so aggressively rent free in my head at one time mean the same thing now? Should it?

As with many other movies I have seen dozens of times before, I had half a dozen other things going on while it was playing, but I couldn’t help dropping those other things and once again being transfixed by the movie. I doubt I’ll ever have it on repeat again like I did back then, but the memories are all still there, and enough time has passed to make them something akin to pleasant. I wonder what Rob is like now. I’d like to think that he would have the same morbid fascination with his prior antics that I do.

Aside from that, every note of the movie feels correct. The soundtrack is great top to bottom, and that has almost nothing to do with the memories it inspires. Jack Black arrives as the movie star we now know him to be. It is truly impressive that the filmmakers were able to change the location of their adaptation from London to Chicago, aside from the long runner where Rob goes on and on about the hypothetical man “called Ian (Tim Robbins)” and I don’t think any American has ever avoided the verb “named” that resolutely.

* Played most recently by Zoë Kravitz in a recent television series that absolutely should have gotten a second season, but I digress

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

Director: Aaron Horvarth, Michael Jelenic

Cast: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black

Have I Seen it Before: Well, here’s the thing, if you’ll forgive me for getting into the review right away. As much as people—and by “people”, I also include both the corporation and creative professionals behind this movie—have looked down on Super Mario Bros. (1993) in the last thirty years, both of these films feel the need to start with nearly the same presence. Mario (Pratt, strangely not nearly as miscast as he appeared on spec) and Luigi (Day) are brave but put-upon Brooklyn plumbers who are pulled into a adventure taking place in a myserious world existing below the New York they know, with the help of a princess (Taylor-Joy) to put a stop to the evil plans of a… guy?… who might be alternatively called Bowser or Koopa, depending on the territory.

Those are the same movies, right? It wasn’t like establishing the brothers in our world was something with which the video games never seemed to bother.

Did I Like It: Aside from that strange parallel to its predecessor, I had to say I was pleasantly surprised by the majority of the film. As I said, Pratt wasn’t nearly as bad as he could have been. The rest of the cast equates itself well, and up until the moment he starts signing, Black is completely unrecognizable in the role. The humor and adventure are well-calibrated to not unduly favor one over the other. That feels like its a complaint, as if it couldn’t be bothered to be interesting, for fear of failing in the attempt, but I understand where they are coming from after everything that happened with the live action attempt. It is a safe, inoffensive piece of entertainment.

In fact, the only particular complaint I can reach for is the strange preponderance of needle drops littered throughout the film. “No Sleep till Brooklyn” might feel like it belongs in the movie, but it’s the Beastie Boys (I’m usually against them showing up anywhere in film, just see <Star Trek (2009)>, but they’re already in Brooklyn when it plays, and I’ve managed to beat all of the NES Mario games, but I apparently lack the skills to understand what “Take on Me” is doing here, other than the fact that the rights holders for a-ha are hard up for cash and willing to let it go for next to nothing.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

Director: Jake Kasdan

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, Jack Black

Have I Seen it Before: Yes.

Did I Like It: I can’t say I was ever in a market for a sequel to the Robin Williams vehicle Jumanji (1995). I can’t even imagine anyone who was aching for a second installment. And that may be the secret to the twenty-year-plus after the fact sequel: Proceed only when expectations are non existant.

It also helps to make the film in a genre completely different from the original. Many have tried for the post-modern riff on The Breakfast Club (1985). They even tried to force the Power Rangers into that mold one time. Here, it largely works because the film is not coming from the same stable of filmmakers that make every other modern entry of hum-drum spectacle (I’m looking in your direction, Zach Snyder), but instead someone with legitimate comedy credentials in Kasdan (Orange County (2002), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)). 

It also helps that each of the key cast members are playing against type. Black and Hart’s performances might have been one-note jokes that would have lived and died in the trailer for the movie, but they are legitimately funny screen presences, so that helps. There are few actresses who can be pointedly easy as the eyes and still believably act like they were never aware of it, but Gillan is that performer.

And then there’s The Rock, or at this point we should really call him Mr. Johnson. That he could come from the world of professional wrestling and still be an engaging and charming leading man in action movies makes him singular in his field. That he is able to evoke the nebbish and not take his macho image at all seriously puts him far above most of his action star brethren. Only Schwarzenegger has credibly brought his presence to comedy, and even he has never done so completely divorced from his image of the Austrian Oak. Somebody like Stallone has never gotten close.

It didn’t have to be a Jumanji film; it’s merely a film far more enjoyable than it had any right or expectation to be.

Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)

Director: Jake Kasdan

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Missed it in the theater. May be missing a lot of movies in the theater for a while. Sigh. 

Let’s not get into that right now.

Did I Like It: There is nothing wrong with this second (third?) movie in this series. It’s reasonably funny. It is adequately filled with the kind of adventure-film tropes one would expect from the series. The stars are all people I would have no trouble watching in really any movie in which they might appear. 

To that note, Warner Bros. would be insane to not let Karen Gillan play Barbara Gordon/Batgirl (Oracle?) in a movie, and let her direct it, but Warner Bros. has been pretty thoroughly insane in their missed opportunities with that character so far. 

Dwayne Johnson continues to make his wrestling career an afterthought for his career, playing equal measures weirdo and pulp hero. He could have been an unbelievably awesome Doc Strange, were it to come to pass, but it seems like we’re going to get stuck with some merely competent former wrestler/actor like John Cena or Donald Trump*.

Let’s not get into any of those things right now.

But all of this was present in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017). The film explores some new territory with its characters, bringing in the energy of Danny DeVito, Danny Glover, and Awkwafina into the mix. Ultimately all of these new additions and how they play into the film came fully delivered with the film’s first trailer. Upon watching that trailer, I thought this new film would be as fresh and exciting as the original (second?) film.

As it turns out, it’s more of the same. Not a complete condemnation, but not a delivery on the promise it once showed.

*Yes, absolutely, that was low hanging fruit. Did it make me smile to type it? Also, absolutely.

The Cable Guy (1996)

Director: Ben Stiller

Cast: Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick, Leslie Mann, Jack Black

Have I Seen it Before: It’s one of my favorites. Fight me.

Did I Like It: Don’t make me say it again.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “How Could No One Else Like These Movies?” published 04/23/2017.

Remembered mainly for Jim Carrey’s then-record twenty-million dollar paycheck, Ben Stiller’s second venture in the director’s chair was almost immediately dismissed upon release as “too dark,” “bleak,” and “not containing nearly enough scenes of an adult male attempting ventriloquism via his buttocks.” For my money, though it is not only a great film, it is the best film that writer Judd Apatow, director Stiller and star Carrey has yet to make. 

Yes, it is the pitch-black tale of a cable installer gone rogue who injects himself into a hapless customer’s life, a la The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1992). It’s more thriller-esque elements are tempered by an all-consuming sympathy for both of its main characters. Both Steven (Matthew Broderick) and the alias-laden titular Cable Guy (Carrey) are woefully unable to relate to people outside of television*. Broderick’s character has the capacity to change and be better by the end of the movie, whereas Carrey is a far more broken, far more tragic character. We, the pop culture obsessed inevitably fall on a spectrum somewhere between the two leads, and we can only hope that our lives are a little more Broderick and a little less Carrey.

Also, it has one of the greater homages to “Amok Time” ever produced—what’s not to love? Seriously, go give the film another look, and if you still hold as low an opinion of the movie as you did twenty years ago… Well, then, just keep it to yourself. I really like it.

But we can all agree it’s better than Zoolander 2 (2016), right?

*Remind us of anyone?