Article: Hit and miss.(FILM)(Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express)(Movie review)

THIS era's comedies may not be remembered as the funniest in American cinematic history, but they're certainly among the most inventive and unpredictable. The well-worn genre staples--sub-Airplane! spoofs, teen sex comedies, glorified Saturday Night Live sketches, bad Eddie Murphy vehicles--are still going reasonably strong, but ever since the late 1990s they've been eclipsed by a more gonzo sensibility. The Farrelly brothers kicked off this anything-goes era with feast-of-fools extravaganzas like Kingpin, Dumb and Dumber, and There's Something about Mary, but two overlapping posses have come to dominate the landscape: the so-called Frat Pack, consisting of Ben Stiller, ...

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