Tropic Thunder

(dir: Ben Stiller)

Aug. 7, 2008

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Now this is more like it…or, at least, about 45 minutes of this is more like it.

I was really hoping Ben Stiller’s new comedy, “Tropic Thunder,” would be a sharp satire that isn’t aimed at iPod-deafened noodle-brains, and some of it’s actually pretty good. It certainly hews closer to the tone of Stiller’s biting Fox TV series, “The Ben Stiller Show,” than something like “Zoolander,” which takes pansy-slaps at pop culture, but ultimately settles for laughing at stupid people in funny clothes.

There’s a lot of opportunity in “Tropic Thunder,” and it’s an impressive, large-scale production for a comedy. Unfortunately, much of that opportunity gets squandered in favor of standard-issue humor that’s just as lazy as “Zoolander”’s snickering and finger-pointing.

“Tropic Thunder” follows the misadventures of a bunch of movie actors who take a while to realize they’ve stopped filming an over-budget Vietnam War epic and are actually being kidnapped, tortured, and shot at by an Asian drug cartel. Stiller (who co-wrote and directed) wrings a handful of sharp laughs out of this far-fetched situation. In fact, the picture starts so inventively, I briefly fooled myself into thinking he could keep hitting bullseyes for 100 minutes. I was wrong, of course, but it felt good to think it.

The movie opens with a series of fake trailers for inane movies starring the actors who'll be appearing in “Tropic Thunder”’s film-within-the-film… if you know what I mean. These include a dead-on jab at Eddie Murphy’s lowbrow excursions into prosthetics and multi-character farting, a series of action movie sequels that are exactly the same picture made again and again and again, and a “Brokeback Mountain” self-discovery epic set in a monastery.

There’s an amusing cameo in that last one, and there are variously effective cameos peppered throughout “Tropic Thunder.” (Note, by the way, how hipster movie stars love to reveal that they know movies have become a pile of pandering horse shit, then proceed to slap on their goggles and dive right back in when they’re done with the revelation. A joke's a joke, but they have mansions to feed.)

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The moment “Tropic Thunder” proper begins, you’re deep in the jungle, getting bombarded with a bunch of histrionic war movie clichés that take the piss out of everything from the psychedelics of “Apocalypse Now” to the overripe religiosity of Oliver Stone’s “Platoon.”

This sequence is far-and-away the best thing Stiller has ever filmed, but I should leave it at that. Be warned, though- the carnage is so extreme, meat flies in the air when guys get shot, and one screaming soldier even wonders exactly what he’s holding when his ravaged guts spew into his hands.

Needless to say, it’s hysterical.

The movie that’s being filmed stars a former action hero named Tugg Speedman (Stiller), who’s reeling from a failed Oscar-grab in which he (very, very poorly) played a mentally challenged man named Simple Jack. Speedman’s far-more respected co-star is Australian Oscar-winner Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.) Lazarus is such a dedicated method actor, he’s had his skin surgically darkened so that he can play an African-American soldier. And, to the dismay of everyone around him, he can’t shake the character when the cameras are off.

Speedman and Lazarus are joined in the pretend platoon by Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), a heroin-snorting comedian who’s made a career out of passing gas on camera, Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel), who’s apparently there to draw a teen audience, and Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), a rapper who manages to wrangle product-placement for his energy drink, Booty Sweat, into a 1960s war setting.

The film’s director, Damian Cockburn (Steve Coogan), can’t control Speedman’s ego, and the budget is quickly spinning out of control. When a studio big-wig (Tom Cruise, in tons of makeup that does nothing to hide his shit-craziness) starts breathing down his neck, Cockburn is convinced by the mangled veteran (Nick Nolte) whose story is being told in the film that dropping the cast into a genuinely dangerous situation would be cheaper and more realistic than what they’ve been doing.

So that’s what happens, and “Tropic Thunder” starts meandering.

The key problem is that only Stiller - whose character eventually becomes a warped variation on Col. Kurtz - and Downey have real characters to play. Black is the other big name in the cast, so he has to do something, but it’s hardly a surprise at this point that that something consists mostly of being fat and screaming a lot. The others just stand around getting shot at and cracking wise while Stiller, and, especially, Downey, dig into a variety of hilariously obtuse topics.

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Downey, as always, is magnificent, in a role that seems to have fallen out of the Randy Newman songbook. People have been trying to work themselves into a lather over a white guy playing a black guy, but they’re missing the point in precisely the same way that they’ve always missed it with Newman.

Stiller and Downey aren’t satirizing African-Americans, for God’s sake. They’re satirizing pretentious, go-for-the-gold movie stars, and the types of roles that are regularly filled by black actors in Vietnam War movies.

Actually, the funniest exchange of dialogue in the entire film is a speech by Lazarus in which he chastises Speedman for going “full-retard” when he played Simple Jack. If you act completely “retarded” like Sean Penn did in “I Am Sam," Lazarus says, you don’t win an Oscar. If you leave some breathing room the way Tom Hanks and Dustin Hoffman did it, you win it.

Try to find an observation that mordant in any other Ben Stiller movie…and I’m not counting “Reality Bites,” because I shouldn’t. It’s the sort of thing that makes “Tropic Thunder” worth seeing, even if the narrative finally turns into an intermittently funny shoot-em-up that’s better at making noise than it is at making points.

I suspect it’ll clean up at the box office. So there may be hope for Ben Stiller yet, if he doesn’t wave the white flag and return to full-retard mode.

”Tropic Thunder” is wall-to-wall with bathroom humor, profanity, drug use, and comically grotesque carnage. Watch for a brilliant sight gag featuring a knife-wielding 4 year-old. I laughed so hard I almost choked. Nolte, by the way, still seems in dire need of a comb, a shave, and a hot cup of coffee. I wouldn't be surprised if he smells like vomit. Rated R. 106 minutes. Release date: Aug. 13th.

Paul Tatara

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