Tropic Thunder (***)Ben Stiller can be very funny, but more often than not recently he's been forced into a lot of asinine crap like Along Came Polly and Night at the Museum (see the Family Guy joke: "So, by this point in the movie we know that Ben Stiller's character doesn't like spicy food. Well, guess what's for dinner!!" "NO. WAY."). As such, Tropic Thunder, a movie that Stiller directed and co-wrote himself, is pretty refreshing to see. It's a tremendously funny movie that has a ton of star power in it, yet doesn't feel derivative and "Hollywooded-up" like the aforementioned movies Stiller has been in as of late.
The movie introduces us to its four main characters through fake commercials and trailers before the movie proper begins. We're first reminded that rapper-turned-actor Alpa Chino's new beverage,"Booty Sweat," is available at the concession stand in the lobby. We then see the preview for Tugg Speedman's (Ben Siller) new movie "Scorched VI," the latest installment of Speedman's action movie franchise in which he has to continuously prevent the apocalypse, which, nearest we can tell, he does by standing stoically on the edge of a canyon holding an assault rifle. "Scorched VI," we learn, will be completely different than the other five "Scorched" movies, because this time Speedman has to prevent the world from going into a deep freeze instead of being destroyed in a hellish inferno. Next, we see the latest vehicle for Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), called "The Fatties," in which Portnoy plays every role. It consists mostly of fart jokes and is eerily similar, and no doubt intentionally so, to the very much real Nutty Professor movies. Lastly, we're introduced to the Australian-born Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), who is heavily into method acting and who tends to gravitate more towards art-house, Oscar-bait roles, as we see from his role in "Satan's Alley," which is basically Brokeback Mountain except in an abbey.
This segues into "main" part of Tropic Thunder begins, where we see that all of the above actors have been cast in a movie-within-a-movie of the same name. It's a big-budget Vietnam war film, with all the explosions, random wanton violence, and action movie cliches of a movie like Rambo, in spite of the fact that its supposed to be adapted from a (purportedly) true story written as a book by an actual Vietnam veteran. They're joined by Kevin Sandusky, a dorky looking kid who looks like Joker from Full Metal Jacket when he's in costume and talks mostly about stuff like the merits of Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD when not in character. We learn that the movie is already behind schedule a week into filming, at that there are questions as to how well the movie's young, upstart director, Damian Cockburn, can keep the massive undertaking under control. After a massive pyrotechnics scene goes awry, Damian seems at the end of his rope, which is when Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), the veteran who's on the set to see how his story is being brought to the big screen, suggests that he take the actors out in the wilderness to really "get 'em in the shit!" Damian then concocts a plan to film the movie in an avant-garde style by actually having the actors trek through the Vietnamese jungle, while they're filmed on hidden cameras mounted amongst the trees. For reasons that I won't spoil, the plan goes horribly awry very early on, leaving the actors to debate whether or not they're still being filmed and trying out figure out where the hell they're going.
The entire movie is pretty funny, but Robert Downey Jr. completely stands out head and shoulders above everybody else. His character, despite being Australian, is cast as an African-American Sargent, and he undergoes a controversial "pigmentation procedure" to better recreate his likeness. This doesn't sit well with Alpa Chino, who points out that, "They gave the only good role for a black man in this movie to Crocodile Dundee!" Kirk Lazarus tries to plead his case with him, but mostly makes things worse as he refuses to break character (not before doing the DVD commentary, he says) the entire time and constantly talks like an overexaggerated Ving Raymes. Robert Downey is nearly unrecognizable in whatever make up they put him in to look black (I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that it wasn't actually a pigmintation procedure in real life), and holds nothing back in creating a character that's completely over the top in the best way.
Ben Stiller's character is funny as well. I think he channels a little bit of Zoolander as he moves haplessly through the jungle, at one point making a disguise out of a panda skin. Jack Black's character spends most of the movie going through withdrawl after he loses his stash of heroin early on in the filming. He has a couple of very funny scenes as he attempts, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep himself from freaking out, although his character's not quite as consistently hilarious as Robert Downey's. Back in Hollywood, there's a subplot with Matthew McConaughey as Tugg Speedman's agent, which isn't quite as funny, until he shows up in the big climax, and I think detracts from the main plot in the jungle more than complements it. There is another very funny appearance by a well known actor which I won't spoil, because for once the commercials actually did a good job of keeping it under wraps. I'll just say that its probably the next funniest thing behind Robert Downey Jr's performance. As I've described, some bits work more than others, but as a whole its a very enjoyable movie.
I remember there being a big controversy when the movie came out regarding its use of the word "retard." Having seen it now, I can tell you what I pretty much suspected to begin with, in that the controversy is mostly complete nonsense. There's a bunch of references in the movie to a character Tugg Speedman played earlier in his career called "Simple Jack," which was meant to be a character that would be endearing to audiences in the way Forrest Gump was, but which failed miserably. Kirk Lazarus's theory is that Speedman's problem was that he went "full retard," point out, for example, that Rain Man wasn't "full retard" but just autistic. There's a whole conversation where they speak about playing "retards" in cruel terms like this, but that's the whole point really. All they really care about is whether or not depicting these characters will get them critical acclaim. They don't actually care about shedding light on the hardships of actually being mentally challenged or anything of the sort. That the two are so nakedly insensitive is the whole reason why the scene is funny. If I may say so, this was a retarded controversy.
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