Dear Mr. B,
You're the love of my life; this you must know. You're my best friend, my motivating force and the single funniest person I ever met. Sharing my life with you is both a pleasure and a privilege, which is what makes what follows so very hard to write.
You see, I've been lying to you for a lot of years now. I don't actually loathe Tropic Thunder. Those early nights I have a couple of times a year when you come in to check on me and see the tail end of it on BBC3? I haven't actually been asleep for the previous hour and a half. I've been giving it my full attention, more or less, and for the most of that time I've been moderately entertained.
Yes, I know it's problematic in any number of respects, and I know that when I say problematic what I really mean is grossly offensive. I know it employs a number of devices that in other films, would send me into a frothing rage. I know, too, that we both have an appreciation for genuine satire, and that no matter how hard it tries, Tropic Thunder lacks the requisite subtlety to qualify. At the same time, however, I can't help but give it points for trying.
Take the blackface scenes, for instance - I cringe to think about them, absolutely, but while I don't claim to be able to speak on racial matters, my personal take is that if you have a sympathetic black guy constantly pointing out how incredibly offensive this is, then maybe, just maybe, it's okay, kindasorta. Ditto the whole business with Simple Jack, a fictional film within a film that bombed horribly because it used a model of disability that was too unlikeable for audiences to be able to really identify. Honestly, how often have we rolled our eyes at yet another piece of heavy-handed Oscar-baiting drama and wondered how in hell people don't see through it? This isn't poking fun at learning disabilities, this is ripping a hole in the egos of moviemakers who treat audiences like morons.
Feel free to argue that I'm biased. Feel free to point out that all it takes is a couple of Robert Downey Junior facial tics to reduce me to a puddle of unquestioning approval. Feel free to tell me that jokes about agents thinking stars have killed prostitutes aren't funny, even if it turns out that they have, in fact, only killed a panda instead. You can even feel free to tell me that the opening trailer for a fictional movie featuring Robert Downey Junior and Tobey Maguire as a couple of monks having an illicit affair isn't actually something that needs an immediate greenlight. All of the above are probably true.
Judge me all you like, but please forgive me?
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