There's Something About Hollywood

Rating: 8/10 (21 September 2008)

As a comedy, "Tropic Thunder" works just fine -- it keeps the laughs coming in that gag-a-minute, gag-reflex-inducing manner of the Farrelly brothers or other current masters of the form. As a satire, it's just okay. Sure, it takes good shots at some deserving targets, like narcissistic young actors, crass movie studio execs and Hollywood fatuousness in general. And much to Ben Stiller and co-writer Justin Theroux's credit, they call out lots of war-movie clichés that you felt too guilty to notice, like the blustering machismo, the Christ-like posing, and the tendency to toss in some hackneyed classic rock song when the action slows down. But self-effacing Hollywood product is still Hollywood product, and if you want depth or darkness in your insider attacks on the film industry I suggest you rent Robert Altman's "The Player" or Blake Edwards' Altman-esquire "S.O.B." instead. But you'll get more laughs out of "Tropic Thunder," and that's probably what Stiller wanted.
The comic scheme is delectable: a bunch of pampered, pompous actors and a clueless director (Steve Coogan) are stranded in the jungles of Vietnam trying to make an Oscar-bait movie based on a war memoir by a rasping, profanity-spewing blowhard vet with hooks for hands (Nick Nolte in an excellent self-parody). Of course, things go horribly wrong (the director dies in the movie's only genuinely uncomfortable joke) and this quintet of dilettantes winds up battling a cartel of heroin smugglers led by an evil preteen. It's a brilliant scenario, but Stiller & co prefer to milk it for the easy laughs -- fortunately for us, they get most of them. Stiller isn't much of an actor, so his washed-up action hero character is kind of bland until he winds up getting abused and tortured, where Stiller always shines. Jack Black is on hand as Jeff Portnoy, a fat, Farrell-style lowbrow comic actor with substance issues. It could be a very mean or very moving part, but Black plays it for sympathy, which makes him more amusing but less disturbing. Jay Baruchel and Brandon T Jackson pick off more low-hanging fruit as, respectively, an earnest young actor and a poseur rapper trying to get taken seriously, and Robert Downey Jr. has the movie's best role and lines as Kirk Lazarus, who seems to be the lovechild of Robert DeNiro and Russell Crowe. All the controversy over the used of the word "retard" is a bit overblown, since it's obvious from the scene between Stiller and Downey that the intended target of ridicule is not the mentally challenged, but the patronizing Hollywood jerks who exploit them for cheap pathos. That's the sort of movie idiocy that "Tropic Thunder" name-checks but does not really explore, and the entire thing seems like a brilliantly produced in-joke than a blistering satire. Please note: you're trying to have it both ways when you ridicule dimwitted actors and then cast Matthew McConaughey and Tom Cruise in bit parts. McConaughey seems to be enjoying himself, but way, way too much ink has been spilled in praise of Mr. Cruise. He's perfectly adequate as a sociopathic film mogul, but Jack Nicholson would probably get yet another Oscar for the role and any semi-decent comic actor (say Will Ferrell or Steve Carrell) would have been much funnier. People only think Tom Cruise is good in the role because he's Tom Cruise, who has benefited more from lowered expectations than anyone this side of George W. Bush.