Tropic Thunder

I went to see Tropic Thunder today...

It was okay...not really my kind of humor, indeed some of it was ick-inducing...

But I really don't understand some people's protests of it.

It's rated R, so nobody under 17 should be able to see it. So the fact that the word "retard" is thrown around continuously during the latter half of the movie shouldn't matter... because nobody over the age of 17 calls other people "retard," right? For the over 17s, when they want to dis' something, they say, "That's so gay."

Yes, I did have my hand over my eyes for each scene with the Simple Jack character. I also had my hand over my eyes for the Fatties trailer at the beginning.

But most people seem to be upset over Robert Downey's character, which I just don't get, as they're complaining about it as if he were legitimately cast in the role of a great white actor in a black role, so that with his "name" he could bring audiences to theaters - which is typically what producers liked to do, although more usually with Asian roles, such as Jonathan Pryce being cast as the Asian role in Madam Butterfly, that got Asian groups all upset. (Of course they don't mind if an Asian plays the Danish character Hamlet.)

Frankly, I thought Downey's character had a lot of good things to say, for all that it was difficult to understand him at time.

But the most important scene in the movie was the one where Ben Stiller heads into the water, and his unit refuses to come with him. "What's wrong with you people?" he demands. He's clearly using "you people" to refer to everyone, because they don't believe him that the movie is still being filmed. Yet Downey's black character has the typical knee-jerk reaction, "What do you mean, "you people?" Similar to the fact that nowadays, the word "articulate" has become as anethema as the "n-word", because of the fuss that one moron made when a black politician was described as "articulate."

Here's a tip. Most teenagers are "inarticulate" - like, ya know...like, whatev-er, dude, so whenever you listen to a teenager who can actually like, you know, put a whole sentence together without putting a swear word in between every word, or inserting a "like" or a "you know" or an "uh," is articulate! And people shouldn't be terrified to say so!