Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Tropic Thunder and District 9

Yesterday while I was waiting for my brother to get to his apartment, I decided to see District 9 at the local AMC. Well, I thought I would be in for a wonderful treat because I was overwhelmed by all of the great acclaim and reviews that I had been hearing from multiple sources about the film. I love science fiction and genre-bending film/fiction, so I was pretty stoked to see the film. 40 minutes into the movie, I was less excited and more vomiticious. I was mired in motion sickness because of the jumpy camera. On the verge of illness, I abandoned any pretense of watching the rest of the movie (I already had closed my eyes for about three minutes and that didn’t help).

This rather painful and awkward experience was later counteracted when I finally watched Tropic Thunder, a movie that I had promised F I would watch almost a week ago and never got around to doing. F was right – hilarious. My belly laughter would have been quite amusing to anyone else watching the movie with me. I especially liked the acting of Robert Downey, Jr., who by far stole the show. Tom Cruise’s character was quite interesting. Like G.I. Joe, I was shocked by the sheer amount of cameos in the film. Totally not impressed by Jack Black or Ben Stiller. I think I will probably avoid such satirical films for a while (satire and I don’t always get along), but I am happy that I finally watched the movie. I love how it opened up with fake movie trailers (something I mentioned in a previous blog).

Hopefully one day, I will be able to rent District 9 and not throw up because I will be able to pause the DVD.

2 comments:

Courtney said...

Uh. S had the same reaction to the camera work in District 9. I'm bummed you didn't love it, but I totally understand your reaction. Makes me think about how some things are good in theory and some things are good in practice and some things are good in both theory and practice.

Laminated Fragments said...

Oh, I did like/love District 9. It was more that I couldn't finish it because I got sick. Definitely liked it more than Tropic Thunder.

Concerning District 9, I love how it was show faux-documentary style. I totally thought the History Channel and the SciFi Channel had a baby and made District 9.