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 In cinemas August 21 [M]
Director: Ben Stiller
Runtime: 107min
Based around the rich premise of Hollywood actors making a Vietnam movie and then ending up in real jungle peril themselves, Tropic Thunder skewers clichés and movie industry foibles left right and centre. Ben Stiller is Tugg Speedman, a fading action star who wants to be taken seriously (read: Sly Stallone), starring alongside a mix of ‘a-list’ and ‘b-list’ stars like Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), a comic actor who derives his stardom from fat suits and fart jokes (yes, Eddie Murphy, plainly, although it wouldn’t be hard to see Black ending up in the same place one day) who also wants to be taken seriously. Robert Downey Jnr as co-star Kirk Lazarus is an Aussie actor who takes himself far too seriously, and while Russell Crowe hasn’t undergone skin pigmentation treatment to play an African American – yet – it’s obvious to see who Downey Jnr is riffing on here, despite his denials in press leading up to the film.
When a boorish studio exec (Tom Cruise, in a bald wig and, er, fat suit) threatens to shut down production of the over-budget Tropic Thunder, a film based on a supposed war hero’s memoir (played superbly by a grizzled Nick Nolte), the director (Steve Coogan) takes his main cast deep into the jungle with the intention of upping the intensity and filming guerrilla style. Unfortunately some nearby opium poppy harvesters don’t take kindly to a group of what appears to be heavily armed soldiers in their area. Misunderstandings, explosions and hilarity ensue.
Tropic Thunder is an odd movie in its way. Yes, it’s Ben Stiller’s best effort in years, and the satirical bullets it sends at Hollywood are often very funny, but it’s still somehow awkward in the sense that it’s lampooning actors and movie-making of a style not that far removed from several of the cast members. For some, particularly Cruise, it almost seems like an apologia or a winked ‘see-we-know-what-the-score-is’ protestation of innocence. Methinks they protest too much.
Despite this strange archness, it’s mostly spot-on. Downey Jnr is genuinely hilarious as Lazarus, refusing to get out of character until he’s finished the DVD commentary. Black as the heroin-addicted Portnoy doesn’t overdo it for once, and the sight of Cruise’s loathsome exec crunking while attempting to convince Tugg’s agent (Matthew McConaughey) to leave his client for dead, is just flat-out bizarre – but in a good way.
Much has been made of disabled groups lambasting the film for Stiller’s highly satirical turn as ‘Simple Jack’, a part Tugg played in the hope of an Oscar, but if anything south-east Asian people cop it worse here, portrayed as simpleton-worshipping jungle gangsters fronted by bloodthirsty children. It seems more like a lazy plot device than a send-up, which is disappointing seeing as just about everything else is satirised.
Nonetheless, there are plenty of gags, and while it seems like an expensive movie industry in-joke at times, the excellent cast and general craziness of the whole scenario more than makes up for it.
****
TOPHER HEALY
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