4 posts categorized "Buddy Movie"

June 08, 2025

FRIENDSHIP

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Punk heart still beating.

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ColeSmithey.comAs grotesque social satires go, "Friendship" doesn't hold a candle to last year's "The Substance."

Writer/director Andrew De Young makes the leap from television to cinema with less than you might hope for in his feature film debut.

Set in a fictional (Midwest) suburb city named Clovis, TV weatherman Austin (Paul Rudd - also executive producing) gets a wrong-address package assist from his neighbor Craig (Tim Robinson).

An all-too-quick friendship develops with both men underestimating the dangers of problematic influence that each man possess.

Craig is on the spectrum, big time. He only wears ugly oversized beige clothing from the same store. Craig's occupation is as a programmer tasked with weaponizing data to control people. You wouldn't call Craig a very well socialized human being.

Indeed, there is no social event that Craig won't ruin if given a chance.

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At work, Craig insists on filling his coffee mug all the way to the brim before walking past busy co-workers with the speed of a sloth.

OCD all the way baby.

Tim Robinson's performance is just about as creepy as creepy gets.

Now, I never need to see him again.

But there's more to it than that. Craig is a narcissist par excellence. He's a bad omen, capable of inflicting great harm on those around him. Craig also has a proclivity for crime.

Craig's cancer-surviving wife Tami (Kate Mara) barely stands a chance.

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Austin, on the other hand is a hard working news broadcaster. Austin even fronts a band of cool middle-aged local musicians who perform at their neighborhood bar.

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Still, Austin has his own potential for exerting bad influence, as when he takes Craig on a long, winding tour of a sewer that leads inside City Hall's corridors of powers during the dark of night, an experience that will come back to bite both men.

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"Friendship" doesn't add up as a complete narrative due to its lack of an empathetic protagonist. Craig is too cringy to be an anti-hero. Austin is just another of Craig's ostensibly long list of victims.

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That leaves Kate Mara's Tami to carry the movie on her shoulders. For a moment it seems that Tami will make the crisis decision that she verbally promises but then reneges on without comment. 

"Friendship" is a feel-bad movie that never manages to make a viable point. The movie never hits the black comic goal that it seems to target. A character would have to perish for that to happen.

If you're looking for a cogent thesis on the current state of strained friendships between men of social class in America, you won't find it here.

ColeSmithey.com

The movie's overriding theme could well be that spectrum narcissists are the new real-life villains making the world hell for the rest of us.

Don't go mushroom hunting with them, or anyone else for that matter really.

Rated R. 100 mins.

2 Stars

Cozy Cole

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October 23, 2023

TROPIC THUNDER — SHOCKTOBER!

ColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.comWelcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

ColeSmithey.com

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ColeSmithey.comSearch and Destroy Comedy
Stiller and Company Launch More Than F-Bombs
By Cole Smithey

A heady blend of outrageous Grand Guignol comic set pieces and fast-twitch dialogue, "Tropic Thunder" walks a fine line of dangerous satire that straddles gallows humor and bawdy pop-culture inflected slapstick. In the midst of filming an "Apocalypse Now"-styled movie an overzealous crew squander a multi-million dollar explosion thereby forcing director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) to plant cameras and explosives in an area of a Southeast Asian jungle for the cast to perform a low-budget reality version of the script.

Top 10 Raunchiest Comedy Moments - Movie Review / Film Essay

Action-movie-has-been Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), goofball comedy star/heroin addict Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), Aussie method actor Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), hip-hop pretty boy Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) and nerdy Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) make up the cast of war movie stereotypes. Aside from some scene-stealing by Tom Cruise as a bald and fat Hollywood producer prone to cursing a blue streak, Robert Downey Jr. owns the movie with his comically layered performance as an actor who underwent skin pigmentation treatment in order to play an African American soldier. Downey’s performance will go down in cinema history as one of the most ridiculous yet comically effective experiments of the decade.

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The movie opens with a series of hilarious parody commercials that identify each of the main "actors" involved in the film-inside-the-film. An Alpa Chino blurb for an energy drink called "Booty Sweat" goes so far into hip-hop culture’s one-track obsession for poontang as to be cathartic. A Tugg Speedman segment for his flagging "Scorcher" action movie franchise points up the futility of action flick sequels, and Jeff Portnoy’s fat/fart comedy movie series "Fatties" pokes in the ribs of Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy for their efforts in that area of humor.

Amazon.com: Tropic Thunder : Robert Downey, Jr., Nick Nolte, David  Pressman, Amy Stiller, Tom Cruise, Ben Stiller, Steve Coogan, Jack Black,  Matthew McConaughey, Justin Theroux, Eric Winzenreid, Reggie Lee, Jay  Baruchel, Trieu

But it’s the sham trailer for Kirk Lazarus’ gay-themed movie "Satan’s Alley," about lust between priests in the Middle Ages, that induces howls of laughter. Tobey Maguire does cameo honors as the object of desire for Lazarus’ character, and narration by movie trailer narration specialist Don LaFontaine provides added punch to the longing stares of passion.

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The satire’s more obvious points of departure comes from movies like "Full Metal Jacket," "Rambo," and to some degree Robert Altman’s "The Player." An ironic use of archetypal war related rock songs shoots daggers at the portentous syrup of Buffalo Springfield’s "For What It’s Worth" that posits "There’s something happening here" as an objective view of a militizia-enforced society at war with itself. The outdated effect of the song is transmogrified into an irreverent post-modern joke.

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It’s a movie about the making of a war movie during an era when all bow at the altar of pop culture celebrity, making interaction between the actors hinge on experiences that are already thrice removed from reality. The brilliance of "Thunder’s" lampoonery comes across in its deeply woven threads of self-referencing character actors and deceptively offhand narrative touches that combine to form a perfect storm of comic ideas. A finely tooled supporting performance from Nick Nolte as the narcissistic Viet Nam vet on whose autobiographical book the sub-movie is based, bestows a degree of cynicism that effortlessly matches the American media’s abysmal condition.

Image gallery for Tropic Thunder - FilmAffinity

The story gets muddled as our team of impromptu soldiers attempt to rescue Tugg Speedman from his incarceration at the hand of a group of heroin purveyors led by a 12-year-old tyrant named Tran (Brandon Soo Hoo). Speedman is reduced to recreating scenes for his captors from his movie "Simple Jack," in which he played a buck-toothed retarded man. Kurk’s reprimand to Tugg for going "full retard" in a movie as a taboo that he should have known better than commit, arrives with examples from "Rain Man," "Forest Gump," and "I Am Sam." Kurt’s insider knowledge about acting rules and styles throws a bravura wink at the profession that’s wrapped up in the being of Tom Cruise’s incarnation as Hollywood mogul Les Grossman.

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The movie wraps up with Cruise doing a hip-hop-styled dance to T.I’s "U Don't Know Me" that contrasts darkly to his famous "Risky Business" underwear jig. It’s a lasting moment of sheer rebellion that puts a bow on "Tropic Thunder" as a comedy intent on searching and destroying mediocrity. It’s a movie that knows what it’s up against.

(Paramount) Rated R. 106 mins. 

4 Stars ColeSmithey.comCozy Cole

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WITHNAIL AND I — SHOCKTOBER!

ColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.comWelcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

ColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.com

LA GRANDE BOUFFE (THE BIG FEAST)ColeSmithey.comA British cult film classic seems like just the thing to break Cole and Mike out of their hangover from SHOCKTOBER! Sadly, Mike fell down in the Craft Beer department so we're pretending to drink Stella Artois for our lively discussion. Get out the cutlery, you'll need at least five pieces for episode #77. 

Bon appétit Bouffers!ColeSmithey.com

ColeSmithey.com 5 Stars SF SHOCKTOBER!

Cozy Cole

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