The Reluctant Whore

Tom Cruise’s campaign to re-invigorate his career (or scrape it back together – it really depends on how you view it) continues with his role in Tropic Thunder. After the mess he caused by firing his publicist Pat Kingsley who did us all a favour by aggressively encouraging Cruise to keep his evidently repellant personality to himself and after he drove United Artists into the ground to the extent that his long time business partner, Paula Wagner has severed ties with him – something had to be done.

He tried pulling in the favors from his old demographic sharer, Oprah under the ridiculous guise of celebrating 25 years since Risky Business, the film that apparently started his career – even though there were several films before that. That apparently didn’t do as much as he’d hoped so he’s really pulling out the big guns now, what with makeup that has him looking old and fat and weird and he’s also acting like a douchebag. I’m fairly certain he’s never looked purposefully hideous in any film except maybe for the wheelchair-bound Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July – the only role that has ever given him an Academy Award Nomination. He’s never looked hideous in a film because his main fans are baby boomer women. Still, if you replace “hot” with “patriotic hero”, apparently it resonates just as much.

Who knows how outright “creepy”, “comedic” and “weird” will resonate. If it doesn’t, maybe he could open an ice cream store. Or, maybe he could buy some blog ads. The click through equation is pretty much fool proof.