The problem with making a satire about Hollywood is that the real thing, ego-and money-driven to the point of madness, is so much more absurd than anything writers can come up with. TROPIC THUNDER succeeds as a brilliant piece of inspired lunacy because it doesn’t try to top reality, instead it reflects it with just the slightest tweak of the funhouse mirror.
Take four over-hyped stars at various points in their respective careers, attach them to an overblown, overproduced war epic set in 1969 Vietnam, put a witless Brit director in charge on location, an unctuous agent back in the States, and a studio head who takes the bottom line very seriously. The stars are Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller, who also directed and co-wrote the script), action star at the end of a long slide from box-office boffo to oblivion, Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.) an Australian star with five Oscars™ and a penchant for going way too far into character, Alpa Chino (Brandon P. Jackson), a rapper with both a clothing line and snack-food empire, and Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), a zaftig funnyman with a string of lowbrow, high-grossing, in many senses, comedies and a serious drug problem. Five days into shooting, they are a month behind schedule, and the million-dollar aerial bombardment sequence was botched because Tugg and Kirk were arguing over crying rights during the scene. The witless director, played to distracted perfection by Steve Coogan, has been driven to clutching at any straw available, including the advice proffered by the Vietnam vet (Nick Nolte) on whose memoirs the film is based. Drop the actors in the jungle with a map and the scene list, plant some cameras and explosives out there with them, and film everything that happens. Desperation makes for muddled thinking and before you can say kaboom, the actors, the director, and the newbie actor kid (Jay Baruchel) whose name no one can quite get right, are facing the wilderness with an uncertain set of survival skills, and a local drug operation in their path. Two problems arise. One, the folks running the drug operation aren’t happy about visitors. Two, they think the actors playing soldiers are actually soldiers.
Tugg goes native, Jeff goes through withdrawal, Kirk can’t break character as an African-American sergeant (he underwent a special skin pigmentation process), Alpa can’t get past it, the Brit director has the best set-up line in this or any other film this year, and the kid whose name no one can get right is the only one who successfully manages to keep fantasy and reality separated. Of course, as the one actor involved whose name is below the title, no one pays attention. Nor does it help when Tugg is held for ransom by the local drug lord. On the other hand, it makes for one of the film’s best scenes, as the ruthless drug lord takes on a ruthless studio head in negotiations and discovers the true meaning of amorality.
Meanwhile, the Vietnam vet and the pyrotechnics whiz (Danny McBride stealing Nolte’s thunder as a deadpan doofus), with a backstory of unfortunate near misses with tragedy, are tracking the thespians. It all leads to the sort of overblown climax into which the worst action flicks devolve. Here, though, the same hyperbole to be found in the work of Rennie Harlan or Michael Bay, is duplicated with all its kitschy wretched excess of explosions and pseudo-psychobabble such that not only does it make it impossible to take those tropes seriously ever again, it is also dovetails neatly into itself as reality, fantasy, and lunacy converge. From the opening faux-trailers that are indistinguishable from the real thing, to the ending that exalts the cliché into the perfect punchline, it is perfection.
The actors, too, keep it real. Stiller’s blank stare that Tugg thinks looks smart while listening to Kirk expound on the theory of acting is second only to the angst Downey exhibits when Kirk endures the de rigeur confrontation with his own inner demons. As profoundly twisted as both of them are, though, neither holds a candle to Black bonding with a water buffalo, or running through the jungle in the briefest of briefs in search of the monster stash of heroin in the drug lord’s camp while screaming “Don’t judge me.” For all that, it may well be Tom Cruise in the most unlikeliest of roles and guises who makes the more memorable mark. Blithely tossing away his good guy, pretty boy persona, he finds himself a new niche with an unfettered, unrestrained performance in which he is all but unrecognizable.
TROPIC THUNDER is loud, boorish, and screamingly funny as it expertly skewers the industry that made it possible.
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