Tropic Thunder Review
by Steve Rhodes (steve DOT rhodes AT internetreviews DOT com)August 13th, 2008
TROPIC THUNDER
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2008 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
Uneven and needlessly gross, TROPIC THUNDER still manages to elicit enough really big laughs to make it an easy film to recommend. Directed by Ben Stiller, it is a movie that is happiest when it is way, way, way over the top, which is where it operates most of the time.
The movie starts with a commercial for Booty Sweat energy drink followed by three great trailers: Scorcher VI, starring Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), The Fatties Part 2, starring Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), and Satan's Alley, starring Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.).
TROPIC THUNDER, with an Escher print of a plot, is about the making of a Vietnam War movie. This movie-within-a-movie is directed by Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) and stars the three actors from the above opening trailers.
Director Cockburn is losing control of his cast and crew as they film the movie on location in Vietnam. After a four million dollar explosion is set off without the cameras rolling, the director is called on the carpet by a take-no-prisoners studio exec named Les Grossman. In one of his best performances in years, Tom Cruise is absolutely hilarious as Grossman. Every time Cruise is on the screen, he is electric.
Matthew McConaughey is almost as good as Cruise. Playing Rick Peck, Speedman's tenacious agent, McConaughey does a spoof of Cruise's part in JERRY MAGUIRE. While everyone in the jungle is trying to stay alive, Peck, back in Hollywood, is the only man willing to go up against the vicious Grossman. Peck has discovered that Speedman has not gotten the TiVo that is specifically called for in his contract, so Peck is ready to move heaven and earth to ensure that Speedman has his own digital video recorder in the jungle.
The movie's big twist is that the director and the studio are so unhappy with the cast that they redesign the project so that it is a reality-based picture with hidden cameras all over the jungle. The jungle turns out to be infested with gun-toting opium farmers who don't realize that anyone is trying to make a movie. It all gets wackier and wackier as the story progresses.
Downey is terrific as Lazarus, but he gets so much into his character as a jive-talking black soldier that much of his dialog is indecipherable. What you can hear is quite funny. The best line comes when he explains to another actor that he stays completely in character until he has finished the commentary track for the DVD release. He also talks at length about the repression he has suffered as a black man, much to the annoyance of a fellow actor who is actually black, rather than just playing one.
One of Speedman's best episodes comes when he accidentally kills a panda. When he tries to explain it over the cell phone to his agent, his agent assumes that Speedman must have killed a prostitute called Amanda. Ah, what trouble a bad cell connection can get you into.
All of the actors are good. Only Black, who never does much other than fart, is something of a disappointment.
What the story does best is to ridicule actors and their methods. "My body may be shackled, but my mind wanders free," Speedman tells the heavily armed drug lords when they capture him. They think he's nuts, which he is.
But it falls to Cruise's character to really "explain" things to us. Speaking of Speedman, he tells his agent that Speedman is "a white knight heading for a black hole. That's physics. The universe is like that. You've got to get used to it."
TROPIC THUNDER runs 1:47. It is rated R for "pervasive language including sexual references, violent content and drug material" and would be acceptable for older teenagers.
My son Jeffrey, age 19, gave the film just **, although he admitted he laughed hard in parts and might like it better the second time he saw it. He said it was too disgusting, too profane and too hard to understand, especially Downey's dialog. He liked Cruise's character best. Jeffrey's girlfriend Yasmin, also 19, gave it ** 1/2. She thought Stiller was awesome as usual, and she liked Black's performance. But she thought the film was too gross and gruesome, and, overall, she just didn't like it much.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Wednesday, August 13, 2008. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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