Tropic Thunder
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Coming Up In Film
Got a film event you want listed? Email Ealasaid with details. AUGUST 2008 SEPTEMBER 2008 |
Directed by: Ben Stiller
Starring:: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr.
Rated: :R for pervasive language including sexual references, violent content and drug material.
Parental Notes:: This is not a kids’ movie. It’s a totally over-the-top comedy aimed at movie-savvy adults and includes plenty of vulgarity, violence, stupidity, and other inappropriateness.
Hollywood has a fondness for making movies about itself, whether they’re serious or comedic. “Tropic Thunder” is a satire of Hollywood, of action movies, of the movie-making process, of just about anything it can get its vulgar, over-the-top hands on. Like other cranked-up comedies in recent years, it’ll probably make you laugh — but you might feel guilty afterwards.
The story is rather convoluted, but revolves largely around a nightmarish film production in Vietnam. A film crew, led by young director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan), is trying to make an adaptation of Sgt. Four-Leaf Tayback’s (Nick Nolte) novel about his rescue during the Vietnam war. But Cockburn has cast several huge stars who are all very difficult in their own ways, and the film is already a month behind schedule even though they’ve only been filming for five days.
With his studio head Les Grossman (a hilarious cameo I won’t spoil the surprise of) breathing down his neck, Cockburn cooks up a wild plan with the help of Tayback: turn the main actors loose in the jungle with cameras hidden in the trees and set up ambushes and explosions. Have them improvise the movie. Of course, things don’t go exactly as planned. For one thing, there’s a drug cartel operating in the area, and when they see five American soldiers, they assume they’re DEA agents and set out to capture them.
Some of the best moments in the film come from the interactions between the main characters. Aussie Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.) is a five-time Oscar winner who has undergone a semi-permanent skin-tinting surgery to play the central African-American role of the film-within-a-film. Lazarus takes his craft so seriously that he never drops character. This aggravates Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), a rapper and genuine African-American who doesn’t appreciate Kirk’s attempts to play a black man.
Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller) is an action star who wants to make the jump to more dramatic stuff, but his one attempt — “Simple Jack,” a movie about a mentally handicapped farmer who thinks he can talk to animals — flopped. He wants to get talk shop with Lazarus, and gets to in some hilarious scenes: the Aussie has zero respect for him, but can’t resist pontificating about his craft.
Heroin addict Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) is best known for his movies where he plays all the members of a large, flatulent family (sound familiar?). He spends most of the jungle trek in semi-delirious withdrawl, useless — unlike young Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel), who seems to be the only actor on the film with any common sense. He’s also the only one who can read a map or who has actually paid attention to what the movie as a whole is about. Of course, since he’s young and inexperienced, the others mostly ignore him.
As you might expect from a film which includes a white actor playing a white actor playing a black man, “Tropic Thunder” doesn’t care much about being politically correct. Or tasteful. If you can’t handle murderous toddlers, disturbing body hair, an energy drink named “Booty Sweat,” or a torn-apart body being treated with an utter lack of respect, “Tropic Thunder” is not the movie for you. But if you like your comedy dial turned to eleven and are looking for something surreal, irreverent, and packed with mayhem, it will hit the spot.