Review: Tropic Thunder (2008)

[Steve Rhodes]

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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Email: Steve.Rhodes at InternetReviews.com

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