Tropic Thunder

Ben Stiller often rests his comedic laurels on parodying ridiculous elements of various industries, whether the egotism of male models (Zoolander) or the crazed competitive nature of professional sportsmen (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story). A staple of MTV Movie Awards shorts (his most notable appearance as Tom Crooze, the overzealous stunt double of the actual Tom Cruise), Stiller has an inarguable knack for lampooning celebrity, often in a self-derisive manner. Maintaining the spirit of the Crooze/Cruise “Mission Impossibler” piece, Tropic Thunder aims to disassemble the rudiments of big budget filmmaking. In form and execution, the film chips away at every asinine block that constitutes studio-backed projects, kicking off with a duo of faux trailers for movies “Most Likely to be Seen At Your Summer Multiplex,” plus an ass-shaking advertisement for an energy drink fittingly titled “Booty Sweat” (a jab at blatant product placement). With a triumvirate of absurd as its leadoff, it’s quickly apparent that the remainder of the film won’t slacken in silliness.

And slacken it doesn’t. In it, a motley crew of actors are assembled to shoot the 21st Century’s answer to Apocalypse Now, a movie plagued by budgetary and scheduling problems, not to mention the crackpot personalities of its leads. Robert Downey Jr. plays a bloated thespian from down under (modeled after a certain hot tempered Aussie) so dedicated to his craft that he undergoes a pigmentation procedure to play a black army sergeant. His co-star Tugg Speedman (Stiller) is an action star whose career is on the decline, especially after a dramatic misstep in Simple Jack, a movie that strives to be Rain Man but ends up more like the Hee Haw version of Radio. Joining them are a heroin addict (Jack Black), diminutive young’un (Jay Baruchel), and hip hop star-cum-big screen player (Brandon T. Jackson, who goes by the rap handle “Alpa Chino”). When their director, Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan), drops them off in the middle of the jungle to rob them of set luxuries, check their egos, and use guerrilla filmmaking tactics to get the job done, madness predictably ensues, but humor, too often, does not.

There is no shortage of gross out gags to feast on (literally, at one point; I won’t spoil the moment) and politically incorrect laughs abound. But Tropic Thunder’s shock value attempts fall short, and Simple Jack’s dense spoof is about as incisive as its commentary gets. R-rated, but juvenile and annoyingly simplistic, there are moments when the movie's self-reflexive jokes tend too much toward smug winks among Hollywood players in the know. As the men descend further into the jungle, their collective sanity begins to unravel and they find themselves at odds with members of a gun-wielding narcotics operation. Plot details get progressively more convoluted, affording the opportunity for plenty of inanimate objects to go “Boom!”, but the recycled scenarios wear thin after the first few setups.

If Tropic Thunder has one redeeming factor, it’s Downey Jr., whose Daniel Day Lewis-meets-Colin Farrell-meets-Russell Crowe character pastiche delivers a keen, hilarious diatribe on the pitfalls of going “full retard” (i.e., what Speedman did for Simple Jack) on screen. Downey “goes there” in his portrayal of Kirk Lazarus, “there” being the most ostentatious satirical bounds imaginable. The odds of Downey Jr. garnering critical accolades for his performance are slim, but if the HFPA throws some love his way, then maybe Tropic Thunder's spoofing will have served its purpose after all.

—Heidi Atwal
08.13.08

Ben Stiller's biggest problem as a director has been that his material has never quite been worthy of his obvious ambition. But in Tropic Thunder, a satire about the insecurity and immaturity of movie stars, which he co-wrote with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, Stiller's obvious comfort and confidence in the material grounds the film so firmly that, for the first time, his directorial ambitions can flourish. The premise is that five actors -- three of them international superstars -- are stranded somewhere in Asia believing they are shooting a guerrilla-style Vietnam War epic, when they're in fact caught up in very real danger. This structure serves up so many delicious possibilities that Stiller and his cohorts can't help themselves, they try everything: physical comedy; self-serious Oscar-bait trailers; profanity-laced diatribes from Hollywood power players -- they even mock the horrors of drug withdrawal, all the while playing up the ceaseless insincerity of almost everyone involved in moviemaking. Well-shot by cinematographer John Toll, and cannily edited by Greg Hayden, the film is a visual treat. Moving briskly from joke to joke, Tropic Thunder, much like Hot Fuzz, works as both as an action film and as a spoof of action films. When there are visual allusions to other Vietnam classics like Apocalypse Now or Platoon, the point is never just to reference those great works -- there's always something else going on in those scenes to make them funny, so the homages simply add another layer of laughter. The care that went into the art direction, for instance (especially in the movie memorabilia on display in an agent's office), will bring a smile to anyone paying attention. Nobody can be faulted for missing some of these subtle pleasures, however, because the big jokes are so consistently uproarious. Everyone from Steve Coogan, as the befuddled British director, to Danny McBride, as a gung-ho special-effects man, to Matthew McConaughey, playing a loyal, unctuous agent, takes full advantage of the numerous opportunities to score laughs. Jay Baruchel deserves particular praise for playing the straight man flawlessly against each and every one of these raging lunatics. But it's Robert Downey Jr. as Kirk Lazarus, an Australian critical darling revered for his chameleon-like method acting, who will keep viewers doubled up with laughter. The character undergoes a radical surgical process that turns his skin black so that he can play an African-American role, and Lazarus refuses to break character, even when the cameras are off. His ongoing verbal battles with entrepreneurial rapper and fellow cast member Alpa Chino (a rock-solid Brandon T. Jackson, whose character gives the film its screamingly funny first scene) become so comically convoluted that they defuse the racial tension. That comedic shock value adds yet another dimension to a movie that already draws upon the rich tradition of Hollywood self-mockery, from Sullivan's Travels to The Player. Time will tell if this film ends up in the pantheon with those poison pen letters to Tinsletown, but it is safe to say that Tropic Thunder is the most consistently funny movie Hollywood managed to produce in the summer of 2008. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide