Tropic Thunder
Tropic Thunder is an occasionally very funny but mostly labored comedy that probably gets a lot more laughs in the private screening rooms of industry folk from Malibu to Sunset Boulevard than it does in multiplexes in Topeka. I mean, how many of us can relate to a storyline about a pampered star not getting TiVo?
The film turns a cynical eye at the excesses of Hollywood and the self-important pricks who run it. A Vietnam war film, also called Tropic Thunder, is being made by a disparate group of Hollywood types. There’s the action star whose career is on the decline (Ben Stiller), a multi-Oscared method actor from Australia who has had his skin darkened in order to play an African-American (Robert Downey Jr.), a Chris Farley-like comedian with a monkey on his back (Jack Black), a hip-hop star (Brandon T. Jackson), and a young actor who still finds the behavior of his co-stars bizarre (Jay Baruchel). They are directed by a British stage director over his head (Steve Coogan). Nick Nolte plays the crusty veteran who wrote the source book, and he suggests that the actors be dropped into the jungle and left to fend for themselves. When Coogan is removed from the scene (in a moment that garnered the loudest laughs in the screening I went to) the clueless thespians manage to get entangled with druglords and have an adventure far beyond anything they could ever imagine.
This reminded me a bit of an off-Broadway play I saw about twenty years ago called Geniuses, by Jonathan Reynolds, which was clearly inspired by Francis Coppola directing Apocalypse Now, so Tropic Thunder doesn’t exactly till new ground. The ridiculous lives of movie people have been made sport of for years, and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. The script, by Stiller, Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, has jokes both obvious and inspired. Most of the good stuff comes in the byplay between Downey, whose character is a brilliant combination of writing and acting, and Jackson, who as an actual African-American is understandably indignant.
I also liked the use of some cameo roles, particularly Matthew McConnaughey as Stiller’s devoted agent, and in an about a ten-second span at the end of the film, during an Academy Awards broadcast, Jon Voight, Lance Bass and Jennifer Love Hewett are all deployed successfully. I’m less sure of what I think about Tom Cruise’s turn as a vulgar studio head, wearing a bald cap and a gorilla mat of chest hair. It’s a ballsy performance, probably inspired by guys like Joel Silver and Scott Rudin, but I didn’t really laugh at it, I kind of stared, slack-jawed.
This is Downey’s picture, and his co-stars suffer in comparison. Black’s character is basically one joke, as he is without drugs and goes through withdrawal (although I was amused by what oral favors he promised Jackson). It is Stiller’s character, though, that really drags down the film. He has two film personas: the dimwitted egomaniac (Zoolander, Dodgeball) and the dyspeptic schlemiel (Meet the Parents, There’s Something About Mary). He combines the two characters here, and neither elements are particularly gripping or funny. I think the lesson of Joe Piscopo applies here: comedians should not bulk up. The less said about Danny McBride, who plays a demolition expert, the better. He has now fouled the waters of two comedies in two consecutive weekends.
The film turns a cynical eye at the excesses of Hollywood and the self-important pricks who run it. A Vietnam war film, also called Tropic Thunder, is being made by a disparate group of Hollywood types. There’s the action star whose career is on the decline (Ben Stiller), a multi-Oscared method actor from Australia who has had his skin darkened in order to play an African-American (Robert Downey Jr.), a Chris Farley-like comedian with a monkey on his back (Jack Black), a hip-hop star (Brandon T. Jackson), and a young actor who still finds the behavior of his co-stars bizarre (Jay Baruchel). They are directed by a British stage director over his head (Steve Coogan). Nick Nolte plays the crusty veteran who wrote the source book, and he suggests that the actors be dropped into the jungle and left to fend for themselves. When Coogan is removed from the scene (in a moment that garnered the loudest laughs in the screening I went to) the clueless thespians manage to get entangled with druglords and have an adventure far beyond anything they could ever imagine.
This reminded me a bit of an off-Broadway play I saw about twenty years ago called Geniuses, by Jonathan Reynolds, which was clearly inspired by Francis Coppola directing Apocalypse Now, so Tropic Thunder doesn’t exactly till new ground. The ridiculous lives of movie people have been made sport of for years, and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. The script, by Stiller, Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, has jokes both obvious and inspired. Most of the good stuff comes in the byplay between Downey, whose character is a brilliant combination of writing and acting, and Jackson, who as an actual African-American is understandably indignant.
I also liked the use of some cameo roles, particularly Matthew McConnaughey as Stiller’s devoted agent, and in an about a ten-second span at the end of the film, during an Academy Awards broadcast, Jon Voight, Lance Bass and Jennifer Love Hewett are all deployed successfully. I’m less sure of what I think about Tom Cruise’s turn as a vulgar studio head, wearing a bald cap and a gorilla mat of chest hair. It’s a ballsy performance, probably inspired by guys like Joel Silver and Scott Rudin, but I didn’t really laugh at it, I kind of stared, slack-jawed.
This is Downey’s picture, and his co-stars suffer in comparison. Black’s character is basically one joke, as he is without drugs and goes through withdrawal (although I was amused by what oral favors he promised Jackson). It is Stiller’s character, though, that really drags down the film. He has two film personas: the dimwitted egomaniac (Zoolander, Dodgeball) and the dyspeptic schlemiel (Meet the Parents, There’s Something About Mary). He combines the two characters here, and neither elements are particularly gripping or funny. I think the lesson of Joe Piscopo applies here: comedians should not bulk up. The less said about Danny McBride, who plays a demolition expert, the better. He has now fouled the waters of two comedies in two consecutive weekends.
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