Jack Black: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

3. Jeff Portnoy - Tropic Thunder (2008)

There's a lot to like about Tropic Thunder: it's provocative and doesn't seem to care about biting the hand that feeds it, and Robert Downey Jnr's performance is both deliciously uncomfortable and hilariously sharp. But it would seem that Jack Black didn't get the full memo detailing how the film would be a barbed, pithy backstab at Hollywood with lots of close to the knuckle jabs alongside the cartoonishness of performances like Tom Cruise's Les Grossman. So instead of playing a recognisable Hollywood caricature, Black ends up being emblematic of everything in the film that's not Downey Jnr, Cruise or production values. His performance - which should have riffed on Chris Farley-like excess and Eddie Murphy/Martin Lawrence-style basement comedy films - ends up being washed out alongside Downey Jr, and instead of letting it happen, it's like he tried to over-compensate by just shouting a bit louder.