Running An OK Thing Into The Ground

When the movie Tropic Thunder came out a few years ago, everyone kept telling me I had to see the film, if for nothing else than the Tom Cruise cameo appearance. I was told his were the funniest scenes of the movie and that Cruise was a comedic genius in this role. Keep in mind this was also when the world started to wonder aloud if Tom Cruise had either gone crazy or had been crazy the whole time and we were just now noticing, so at the time Cruise could use all the good publicity he could get. It was probably the only reason he agreed to it in the first place. Like with the rest of Tropic Thunder, I was under-whelmed with Cruise's performance. At the time, I did not hold this against him; I felt this is mostly due to over-hype. I was told repeatedly how funny this movie was, so I was expecting a laugh a minute. While it was funny, it wasn't that funny. But, in fairness, I'm not sure any movie could have lived up to expectations under those circumstances. So, I moved on and mostly forgot about Cruise's character of Les Grossman.

But, when Cruise made an appearance as Grossman at the MTV Movie Awards (another thing that was hyped as "you won't believe what is going to happen" and then also under-whelmed everyone who watched), you had to know something was up. Tropic Thunder came out a couple years ago now, so why was this character being brought back up? Well, it turns out that the Les Grossman character will be getting his own movie. Cue the heavy sigh. Have these people learned nothing from the vast number of failed SNL character movies? Taking a character that has one dimension (in this case Grossman dances funny and swears a lot) and trying to stretch that in 90 minutes is not going to work. The shock of Cruise in a fat suit is over; now all you're going to have is a guy who swears a lot. Like that shtick won't get really old really fast? The thing is, the character was only a minor part of the story so if he wasn't played by Cruise there is no way they would ever even talk about making the Grossman character into his own movie. I get that Cruise's last couple of movies haven't done that well and his new one doesn't look much better, but trying to coax a feature-length movie out of a character that was on-screen for about 8 minutes is pushing it. Wouldn't a Top Gun sequel be more interesting? How about Days of Thunder in the present day NASCAR setting? C'mon, Cruise, you can do better.

-Count me among those who were bummed out to hear that ESPN was planning to close all but one of its ESPNZone restaurants across the country (the Anaheim location is the only one that will remain open). I had always hoped one would open in Boston, because the burger I got there had to be one of the better burgers I have ever had. Plus, I loved the arcade upstairs. But, I get that they probably weren't worth keeping because people aren't really interested in ESPN memorabilia. Basically, all sports fans want is a place to have good food and a clear line to the TV. There are 50,000 of those places nationwide and the food doesn't cost nearly as much at the majority of them. Still, I had points left on my ESPN Powercard. Now what am I supposed to do with it?