‘Tropic Thunder’ 2-Disc Director’s Cut on DVD…

‘Tropic Thunder’ just released on DVD and I am telling you right now this is one you HAVE to own. Go out and buy the 2 disk directors cut if for no other reason than to get the badass special features. The best of the features is the faux documentary that they mention in the movie, ‘Rain of Madness the Tropic Thunder Documentary’, is actually a real documentary that they included on the 2nd disk! I know you could download it for a while but I was stunned to see it on the special features.

So whatever you do, do not miss out on this one or you will be very, very sorry my friends.

For those of you that did not catch our review of it in theaters, you can read Travis’ review here:

Hold onto your pants and put down that extra large soda pop and popcorn because you’re not going to stop laughing long enough to enjoy it. ‘Tropic Thunder’ is one movie that surprised the Hell out of me more than any other so far in 2008. I figured it would be funny, but I had no idea it was going to be this damn good. Surprised only barely touches on my experience, especially when I realized that Ben Stiller co-wrote and directed this film. I’m admittedly not the biggest fan of Stiller’s but after seeing ‘Tropic Thunder’ I am giving him brownie points as a filmmaker over being an actor.

‘Tropic Thunder’ is a comedy, a parody, a farce †¦ all rolled up into one really well-made comedy-action laugh ‘n roll movie. The story is of three big-shot actors who are making a war movie (Tropic Thunder) based on a book of the same title by Sgt. Four Leaf (Nick Nolte), which is supposed to be based on his true-life war story. Nolte is wonderful and makes a priceless Nolte-style addition to this film. Speedman (Ben Stiller), Portney (Jack Black) and Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.) are highly successful and pretentious high-dollar Hollywood actors and Damien (Steve Coogan) is the failing rookie director that can’t keep his stars in line. When Four Leaf sees the film going into the toilet, he convinces Damien to chopper the stars out into the heart of the jungle and shoot the film in “the sh**† guerrilla style. What begins as a novel effort to salvage the movie that the studio was about to dump, very quickly turns into a real life battle to survive for the actors.

From the very beginning, ‘Tropic Thunder’ had me busting my gut and that’s a lot of gut to bust. After the “real† trailers we are treated to three “fake† trailers †¦ one for each of the “fake† movie stars. These trailers are worth seeing in and of themselves, parodying not only the characters but also the genres they inhabit. Then, the DreamWorks logo emerges and we enter into the actual movie. ‘Tropic Thunder’ often pays homage to its “serious† predecessors with references to films like ‘Full Metal Jacket’, ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘Rambo’. The soundtrack is great also, if you’re into the classic rock tunes of the late 60’s †¦ staples of the Vietnam War sub-genre of movies.

In addition to all of this, Matthew McConaughey shows up with an unannounced role as Speedman’s agent and Tom Cruise of all people nearly steals the show with his unannounced role as the big-shot Hollywood movie mogul Les Grossman. Having dusted off his role as Frank T.J. Mackey and amplified it to the extreme, Cruise delivers what I consider to be his most entertaining performance ever. Robert Downey, Jr. is the actor who gets my attention in this film (next to Cruise) for yet another great performance in his recent streak of comeback movies, proving to audiences that he’s not down for the count. Rounding out the cast are Brandon T. Jackson and Jay Baruchel as the remaining two soldier-actors, Danny McBride plays the explosion-obsessed pyro-technic Cody, and Tobey Maguire and Mickey Rooney make cameo appearances. Perhaps the best comedy of 2008, ‘Tropic Thunder’ is definitely worth your ticket price and more in laughs.

Overall: 4 out of 5 stars