The movie they think they're making... isn't a movie anymore.
Tropic Thunder
By Joseph Tan
Director: Ben Stiller
Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr, Jack Black, Nick Nolte, Tom Cruise
Official website: http://www.tropicthunder.com/
A motley crew of prima donna actors making the Vietnam War epic Tropic Thunder are dumped by their frustrated director in the jungle. Thinking that they are still filming, they end up incurring the wrath of a gang of drug dealers, and have to fight their way out.
That, in essence, is all you need to know about Ben Stiller's comedic magnum opus, also named Tropic Thunder. Plot and story don't really matter here, and ultimately, no one really cares that it's riddled with logical inconsistencies, implausibilities, and deus ex machinas. As far as Stiller is concerned, the movie is just a way to deliver the laughs.
And boy, does it deliver. From the beginning of the film, with its back-to-back pastiche of over-the-top faux adverts and movie trailers, Stiller and his cohorts make it clear that no cow is sacred as far as they are concerned. From sell-out rappers and mindless Hollywood blockbusters to the overly indulgent arthouse movies, no one is spared.
The satire of Tropic Thunder is sharp, lacerating and, for the most part, spot-on. This is in large part down to the actors. Nick Nolte is tremendous as a ham-fisted Vietnam War veteran, and newcomer Brandon T. Jackson is intermittently funny as the Scarface-worshipping, hip-hop sell-out Alpa Chino (say that out loud). Director/star Stiller is adequately funny as narcissistic action hero Tugg Speedman, but he wisely chooses to parse the screen time between the other actors, key among whom is Robert Downey Jr as an overly serious actor who is slowly cracking under the strain of remaining in character. The chemistry between Stiller and Downey is clearly evident, as the scenes they share are among the most hilarious.
The casting of Downey as Kirk Lazarus, the Aussie actor who plays the film-within-a-film's Sergeant Osirius is one of the movie's most successful jokes: one of Hollywood's most notoriously Method actors, Downey plays a character that pokes fun at all other Method actors. The white Lazarus undergoes a skin coloration procedure in order to 'become' the African-American Osirius, which means that Downey spends the film almost entirely in blackface. It's to Downey's credit that the joke's punchline lands squarely where it's supposed to land - on the square jaws of Method actors like Russell Crowe - instead of being grossly and racially inappropriate. Honestly, only Robert Downey Jr. could have pulled this off.
But Downey isn't the best thing about Tropic Thunder: that honor, surprisingly, belongs to Tom Cruise. Cruise has always been too self-conscious to be effective as an actor - every time I see him onscreen, I'm always aware that it's Tom Cruise, Hollywood superstar, playing a role. But here, almost unrecognizable as the fat, balding and expletive-spewing producer Les Grossman, he disappears into his character in a way he hasn't done since his turn as the conflicted T.J. Mackay in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. The role might have been nothing more than an extended cameo, but Cruise stands out among this powerhouse cast.
Some of the other actors don't fare as well under the Tropic Thunder spotlight. Steve Coogan, as the ludicrously named director Damien Cockburn, is nothing more than a plot device, and Jack Black isn't given much to do beyond being a one-dimensional, drug-addled parody of crass, comedy actors (hands up, Eddie Murphy). His character, Jack Portnoy, could have easily been excised from the film, and perhaps it should have been - it would have made the film trimmer, leaner, and fitter. Nonetheless, Tropic Thunder will be remembered as a comedy classic, and rightfully so. So get yourselves to a cinema, kick back, ignore the gaping plot holes, and feel the Thunder.
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