Tropic Thunder
Comedies rarely leave you speechless. You’re supposed to generally leave in stitches from laughing, but you’re supposed to be saying something. Twice this summer, however, comedies have left me slack-jawed. With “The Love Guru,” it was in how totally Mike Myers had missed my funny bone. With “Tropic Thunder,” however, it was with how sharply it aimed for it, and proceeded to shatter it with brash accuracy. In his fourth film as director (after “Reality Bites,” “The Cable Guy,” and “Zoolander”), Ben Stiller hits his target in a way he hasn’t onscreen since the underrated “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.” One piece of advice- do NOT read anything, listen to anything, or let anyone say anything about this film going in. For one reason, the surprise will hit you greater. For another, anyone who would dare ruin the experience of watching this film should be blown up by a French land mine that wasn’t quite discovered.
As Hollywood satires go, “Tropic Thunder” ain’t exactly subtle…which is part of its’ success. More “Bowfinger” than “Get Shorty” or “Ed Wood” (or even “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back”), not even that does this film justice tonally. For that, you have to look at the films of Matt Stone and Trey Parker (“South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,” “Team America: World Police,” “Orgazmo,” and even “BASEketball”) for a suitable comparison. Stiller and co.- working from a sharp script from Stiller, Etan Cohen (no, not the Coen Brother), and “Mulholland Dr.” co-star Justin Theroux- take things to a different level of broad comedy that is almost surreal in a way it sort of feels plausible, but is too patently absurd to be believable. That said, you know there are people who act this way in real life. The question you need to ask yourself, though, is “Do you want to know that?”
Let’s start with the stars. Tugg Speedman (Stiller) is an aging action star who’s run his signature franchise into the ground (“Scorcher”) with increasingly senseless sequels. And like many action stars, his forays into “serious filmmaking”- in this case, playing a mentally-disabled man who thinks he can speak to animals (“Simple Jack”)- are met with disastrous results (no box-office boom, no Oscar nod). Though his agent (the suave Matthew McConaughey…yes, it’s that type of movie) thinks otherwise when he isn’t thinking about getting his client’s TiVO hooked up, he should leave the heavy-acting to stars like Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), an Australian, 5-time Oscar winner who takes Method acting to levels that border on insanity- like dying his skin so he can play an African-American soldier. Almost as out-of-his-league as Speedman is with the likes of Lazarus, however, is Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), a heroin-addicted comedian whose film franchise “The Fatties” revels in fart jokes and not much else.
The three are the heavyweights of the cast of “Tropic Thunder,” a Vietnam war movie directed by a first-timer (Steve Coogan plays Damien Cockburn) who can’t get a straight answer from the war-worn author of the book they’re adapting (Nick Nolte as Four Leaf Tayback, the character Stiller’s playing) or a good take off when his pyro-happy effects specialist (“Pineapple Express'” Danny McBride plays the over-anxious Cody). Supporting players Alpa Chino (the rapper superstar played by Brandon T. Jackson) and Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) are easy to manage compared to the acting pissing matches Speedman and Lazarus put on, with Portnoy’s heroin addiction making things even more difficult. All of this doesn’t please money man Les Grossman back in Hollywood, played in an unmissable turn by one of Hollywood’s biggest stars (I’ll let you figure out which one, if you don’t know already) that screams “scene stealer” and will have you screaming “What the f!*@?”, although he has his “nutless monkey” of an assistant (Bill Hader) he can scream at if he needs to. Cockburn’s idea to take his actors into the jungle “guerilla-style” at the insistence of Four Leaf isn’t a bad one until a land mine goes off, and a drug-making operation kidnaps our actors, who think it’s just part of the script.
This all begs the question…how the Hell do I even begin to review this film? Let’s start with controversy. Now, the obvious hot-topic belongs to Downey Jr.’s Lazarus, and before I get into things there, let me just say that if Downey Jr. (in the comeback of the decade this year between this and “Iron Man”) doesn’t land at least one Oscar nomination this year for either role I might be prone to calling the Academy a bunch of nutless monkeys myself. On a roll since his 2005 re-coming out party with a triple team of greatness in the form of George Clooney’s “Good Night, and Good Luck,” Steven Soderbergh’s “Equilibrium” segment of the anthology “Eros,” and- best of all- the sharp Shane Black action-comedy “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” Downey Jr. was a smooth operator who grew a conscious in “Iron Man”; here, he’s a comic master in the way he let’s people in on the joke of Lazarus, who’s so committed to his craft he doesn’t even see how his stereotypical performance reeks of an offensive blackface routine, even when Alpa Chino (whom Jackson plays with brash wit and surprising gravitas) is calling him on all his shit (yes, he did just quote “The Jefferson’s” theme song). Their back-and-forth is one of the film’s treasures, and keeps the fever pitch from getting too high.
But another controversy has arisen, and while I can understand how it happened, it’s a clear-cut case of taking something out of its’ intended context. Disabled rights’ groups are up in arms over the whole subplot of Speedman’s “Simple Jack” character- which has a surprising comic shelf life in this film- and, I think, a discussion between Tugg and Lazarus that has a liberal use of the word “retard” in it in particular. Without giving too much away, the point isn’t to insult the mentally-challenged but to point out the cluelessness of these actors when it comes to their acting “methods.” Look, I find the use of the word retard particularly off-putting myself (although I have used it in the past), but I didn’t find myself offended here but inspired by how fearless Stiller was in biting the hand that feeds him (and on a reported $100 million-plus budget no less; God bless Dreamworks head men Steven Spielberg and David Geffen for taking the chance). As a character, Simple Jack’s as offensive having Lazarus dye his skin for the sake of a role, but the point is satirical stabs at a hopelessly clueless Hollywood, not at an overly-sensitive public. Of course, if that means Stiller gets pissed-off calls from such actorly influences as Russell Crowe, Eddie Murphy, Sylvester Stallone, Sean Penn and the ghosts of Marlon Brando, John Belushi, and Chris Farley- all of whom can be pointed to in having inspired the characters of Lazarus, Portnoy (whom Black plays as a man crazed for heroin, even if that means having the platoon tie him to a tree to hold him back), and Speedman (whom Stiller plays at the same wonderfully stupid pitch as he was in “Dodgeball”), I’m sure he can take the heat. He’ll just take it out on Hollywood in his next film.
