Derek Zoolander without Magnum

Rating: 7/10 (10 November 2008)

I admit it now, I missed the point with this film. I saw plenty of pre-film publicity and its a film I wanted to see having read some favourable reviews. I was looking forward to it. I was in no way going to draw a comparison with Zoolander and then I realised that that is exactly what I ended up doing. Tropic Thunder is a satire of Hollywood egos, making movies, the motivation for making movies (Oscars), and the war film (Platoon in particular). Now there are some genuinely funny moments in this film but I'm at pains to remember what they were. All I can remember is another terrible performance from Jack Black, playing a drug addled fat guy. Ben Stiller played his usual stupid guy. Think Derek Zoolander without Magnum. Robert Downey Jr was a guy playing a guy pretending to be a guy.
The premise was good - a real life war film with actors flung into a jungle being filmed on hand-held cameras. For me it all fell apart when they came to the 'Pow Camp'. At that point it just became a sub Rambo 3 action film with bad jokes. I mean great, so it had a happy ending, and great, it was as violent and non-lethal as The A-Team, but very gory but it all felt so... forced.
That said it gets an extra point for Tom Cruise's fantastic performance, especially his telephone putdown which was a real treat.