Tropic Thunder (2008) * * *

 

Directed by:  Ben Stiller

 

Starring:   Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Jay Baruchel, Nick Nolte, Matthew McConaughey, Danny McBride, Steve Coogan, Brandon T. Jackson

 

Tropic Thunder skewers Hollywood and everything in it.    It is satire with an edge and a sense of daring.    When Kirk Lazarus (Downey) tells Tug Speedman (Stiller) he didn't win an Oscar for his role in "Simple Jack" because he went "full-on retard" with his performance  (The same goes for Sean Penn in "I Am Sam"), you get the idea that these may be conversations that actors have amongst themselves.    Does Tropic Thunder hit all of the time?    No.    Some scenes fall flat.    But, most of the time it is funny and gives us almost an insider's view of the movie world.

 

The plot itself sounds simple enough:    A movie crew and actors led by Speedman, Lazarus, and heroin-addicted Jeff Portnoy (Black) set out to film a Vietnam War epic in the jungles of Southeast Asia and soon find themselves fighting drug lords who don't realize these guys are only actors shooting a movie.    The fact that Speedman played Simple Jack lends itself to an unexpected payoff and saves his life.    The surrounding cast of characters, and some are indeed characters, include a rapper-turned-actor named Alpa Chino (Jackson), a Vietnam vet screenwriter who never actually stepped foot in Vietnam before (Nolte), a director who walks off the set in frustration (Coogan), Tug's agent (McConaughey) who thinks the worst thing Tug is going through is not having TiVo set up in his trailer, and Les Grossman (Cruise), a studio head so powerful he intimidates drug cartels with his threats.

 

And then there is Lazarus, an actor so engrossed in The Method that he stains his skin brown and stays in character all the time.     He begins to think he is actually black, much to the consternation of Chino, who tries in vain to convince Lazarus he isn't actually black.     When Lazarus takes offense to Tug saying, "You people," Chino asks Lazarus, "What do you mean 'You People?"    Downey Jr. was nominated for an Oscar for his performance and it is a brilliant one.    It is his misfortune to have been nominated in the same year Heath Ledger won his posthumous Oscar for The Dark Knight.    You think of all the ways Downey could have gone wrong playing a white actor pretending to be black actor, but it is slyly fun and not over-the-top.    Another actor could have easily steered into bad satire.  

 

Tropic Thunder maintains its tone throughout and the actors are clearly enjoying themselves.    Tom Cruise is fat and bald as Grossman (you may not recognize him at first), but you clearly see he relished the idea to let loose and satirize the same types of studio heads I'm sure he has encountered over the years.     The movie is almost Stiller (who co-wrote with Justin Theroux and directed) leaping at the chance to take on Hollywood's big-budget studio system.    It is funny to understand that Stiller is making fun of the same people who are financing and distributing the very film that is making them the butt of the joke.    Who says Hollywood doesn't have a sense of humor?