Tropic Thunder
August 27, 2008
Ben Stiller hits a satiric home run with this crude and smart insider spoof of war movies and big budget film-making, about a vain troupe of actors trudging through the jungle of Southeast Asia trying to make a “Platoon” like Vietnam epic. The only problem, when their flighty British director is accidentally blown up on a land mine, and a guerrilla gang of drug smugglers mistake the actors for real American troops, the line between play fiction and actual danger gets hilariously blurred. Stiller receives top billing as nearly washed up action star Tugg Speedman, making a play at a comeback after some ill advised choices, but as co-writer and director he spreads the laughs throughout an all-star cast, none better than Tom Cruise as a foul mouthed and frisky studio boss, and an on fire Robert Downey Jr. as an Aussie method actor in black face, on and off camera. Some of the insider jokes about the vanity of actors and the sycophantic ploys of agents and studio lackeys are obvious, and Stiller isn't beyond toilet humor to get a cheap laugh, but for the most part this is first rate comedy, and if the Academy took this kind of work seriously, Downey would be tapped for a Best Supporting Actor nod for his total dedication to a role, that in lesser hands, could have been an embarrassing disaster. The same could be said for the entire production itself, but this is a film that rarely betrays it's bizarre notions of fame, identity, and second chances, and for it we've probably got the best Hollywood satire since Robert Altman's “The Player” or The Simpsons' classic “Radioactive Man” episode.
By Adam Suraf