"What is this?" you might ask. This, the picture and the tag line "Once upon a time... there was a retard." is from a spoof movie called "Simple Jack" inside the movie "Tropic Thunder". I was lucky enough to watch it on Tuesday with the iTunes group, and before I watched it I saw that disability groups were protesting the movie, and it didn't make any sense to me as to why they were protesting. Now I know that they were protesting "Simple Jack". This is going to get complicated but here goes anyway...
Tropic Thunder is a movie about the making of a war movie where the actors think they are working on a movie that is based on a true story, but it turns out to not be a true story. While they are filming the movie, the director decides he wants to film more "gorilla style" and drops them off into the jungle of Vietnam where they run into a heroin making operation called Red Dragon. So they do some fighting while some of them think it is all part of the movie they are making and some of the actors know it is for real.
To top all that "Tropic Thunder" goes to great lengths as to produce movie trailers for other movies that these actors have done. For instance, Robert Downey Jr's character did a movie about two gay monks, Jack Black's character did several movies about fat people farting, and Ben Stiller's character did "Simple Jack" and several action movies.
Overall this movie is very entertaining and slightly offensive. It has way over the top language, lots of gratuitous violence and explosions, and definitely earns its R rating. My guess is that if you are a male between the ages of 13 and 35 you will probably like this movie. Even if you don't find this movie all that great you will definitely get a few laughs from it.
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