Movie review: ‘Tropic Thunder’ a dumbly intelligent side splitter
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Aug 20, 2008 at 6:46am
Crude but hysterical, dumb but intelligent, Tropic Thunder is a raunchy comedy that evokes everything from chuckles to belly laughs with a clever script that skewers Hollywood, war films and actors. Directed, co-written (along with Justin Theroux) and starring Ben Stiller, it’s the tale of three vain actors trying to make a war movie called Tropic Thunder, in which everything goes wrong.
Stiller is Tugg Speedman, an aging action star trying to overcome a career slump. Robert Downey Jr. is Kirk Lazarus, the “world’s greatest actor” who has a surgical procedure to change his skin color so he can play a black solider. Jack Black is Jeff Portnoy, a drug-addled comedian who wants respect after making big bucks playing multiple roles as a flatulent family in The Fatties movies. They’re joined by young actor (Jay Baruchel) as Kevin Sanduskey, who’s hoping for his big break in the movie, and Alpha China (Brandon T. Jackson) as a rapper turned actor (who’s also into hawking his “Booty Sweat” energy drink).
Tropic Thunder (the movie-within-the-movie) is “two weeks over budget” after only five days. The novice British director (hilariously played by Steve Coogan) is chewed up and spit out by the film’s producer, Les Grosman (Tom Cruise, in a profane, dancing cameo you won’t soon forget) and instructed to get the film done pronto. Nick Nolte, the grizzled author of the book on which the film is based, convinces the director to go for the gritty approach, drop the actors in the middle of the jungle and film them only with hidden webcams. The director does, disappears (in one of the movie’s most bizarre, twisted scenes) and the actors have soon run afoul of dangerous drug merchants—even as they think they’re still making a movie.
None of this really makes any sense. But it gives Stiller and Company plenty of time to lampoon the movie industry. The “trailers” that precede Tropic Thunder are spot-on lampoons, from the umpteenth sequel to a hit action movie (Scorcher VII: Meltdown) to the comedy that appeals to the lowest denominator (The Fatties: Fart 2) to solemn Oscar bait (Satan’s Alley—think Brokeback Mountain in a monastery). Tropic Thunder is filled with clever cameos (including Matthew McConaughey as a talent agent determined to get his client a TiVO on location—if he doesn’t trade the actor’s life for an airplane first).
Some of the scenes in Tropic Thunder are real gems. Especially when Lazarus explains to Speedman how to get an Oscar nomination for playing a mentally challenged person. The film also has two boffo finales—one set in the jungle with drug lords, a helicopter, a missile launcher and a TiVO, the other set at the Academy Awards.
The entire cast is first rate, though Downey Jr. steals every scene he’s in. Black and Danny McCloud (as a gung-ho explosives expert) are surprisingly underutilized. Also, some of the jokes are so inside-y that only true film buffs and those in the industry will get them. And Tropic Thunder’s rain of profanity seems merely there to show what an “edgy” comedy this is.
Despite its flaws, this is the funniest film to hit theaters in a long time. Tropic Thunder is profane, but it’s also, at times, goofily profound.
Tropic Thunder is rated R for pervasive language, sexual references, violent content and drug material. Running time: 107 minutes. Macsimum rating: 7.5 out of 10. You can check out the film’s trailer on the QuickTime movie trailer site.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
