A Triumph for Ben Stiller

Rating: 8/10 (8 April 2015)

2008's Tropic Thunder was a scathingly dark and roll-on-the-floor funny satire and an on-target look at behind the scenes Hollywood that was a triumph for its director, co-writer, and star, Ben Stiller. This film is on the surface a satire of the film Apocalypse Now and the subsequent documentary Hearts of Darkness and if you watch closely, you will also notice affectionate winks at films like The Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, and even Scarface. I love when films make fun of Hollywood and let us in on the joke and Stiller has let us in on the joke with a vengeance here.
The film has a brilliant opening which shows trailers and music videos of the various stars before they begin work on the movie-within-a-movie of the title. The film is then joined on location where it has gone millions over budget, forcing the director to take a new tack and flying the five principal actors to a remote Vietnamese location, at which time the director is accidentally killed, but the lead actor is convinced that it is a hoax and that the director wants them to continue the film on their own. Filming is complicated as the lead actor begins a descent into madness while being kidnapped by a group of Vietnamese drug dealers who he thinks are actors. Things get even messier when the villains mistake our hero for the mentally retarded character he played in a previous movie.
Ben Stiller plays Tugg Speedman, the lead actor whose career has been primarily manufactured through an action franchise called Scorcher. Robert Downey Jr. plays Kirk Lazarus, a five-time Oscar winning Australian actor who has had an operation to alter his pigmentation so that he can play an African American character in the movie. Jack Black plays Jeff Portnoy, a drugged out comic actor making his first foray into the action genre. Brandon T. Jackson plays Alpa Chino, a rap star making his film debut and Jay Baruchel plays Kevin Sandusky, a struggling actor appearing in his first major role.
Watching the interplay between these five characters had me rolling on the floor from opening to closing credits, particularly the exchanges between Lazarus and Chino, as Lazarus seems to be descending into his own mini-madness where he almost forgets that he is Caucasian and how it annoys Chino to no end. Robert Downey Jr. is nothing short of brilliant and just about steals the movie as Lazarus, in a characterization that is so off-the-wall yet steeped in enough realism that the performance earned Downey an Oscar nomination. I lost it every time Chino felt the need to remind Lazarus that he wasn't black. Baruchel made an appropriate voice of reason among the group and Jack Black's character gets funnier as he starts jonesing for drugs.
Mention should also be made of a trio of supporting turns from Danny McBride as the maniacal special effects director, Matthew McConaughey as Tugg's fast-talking agent and especially Tom Cruise, almost unrecognizable but hysterically funny as the producer of the film who thinks Tugg's kidnapping is a hoax and is willing to throw him under the proverbial bus (or rice patty if you will). There's even a classy turn from Nick Nolte as the author of the book the movie is based on.
Stiller's direction is detail-oriented and immediately conjures up the images of the films that are being saluted here. His screenplay with Justin Theroux is brutally accurate in its cynicism as well as its realism and is brilliantly served by a perfect cast. One of the funniest movies I have seen in years that will demand repeat viewings.