Movie Review: Tropic Thunder
By Matthew Huntley
August 22, 2008
Now here is a spoof movie done right. Forget all those "Movie" movies (Date Movie, Superhero Movie, etc.); Tropic Thunder is the one to see because it lampoons a worthy subject: Hollywood. In other words, it attacks redundant trends and egotism. Unlike recent spoofs, which merely re-enact popular culture rather than say something interesting or meaningful about it, Tropic Thunder is more inventive and edgy, even though it feels like we've traveled down its road before.
There have been many Hollywood satires targeted at Hollywood and Tropic Thunder doesn't push the envelope much further than (or even as far as) some of its brethren (The Player, State and Main), but it's edgy and funny, sometimes uproarious. By blending action and comedy, the movie gives itself plenty of opportunities to take a lot of jabs. What's refreshing is those being jabbed at don't seem to mind and happily go along with it.
For all its extremities, the movie's set up doesn't seem too farfetched: the stars of a big-budget war picture called Tropic Thunder are placed in the middle of the Vietnam jungle to finish the movie, which, after only five days of shooting, is already a month behind schedule. Millions of dollars have already been spent and the head of the studio, a profane, balding man named Les Grossman (Tom Cruise, nice touch), is threatening to shut it down.
Director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) blames it on the prima donna actors - Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), and Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel). They are an assortment of Hollywood stereotypes, each convincing in their own right. Speedman is the dried up action star, sort of a mix between Tom Cruise and Kurt Russell; Lazarus is a five-time Academy Award winner who gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, "method actor" (he goes so far as to dye his skin black to play an African American); Portnoy is the shameless one-note comedian and drug addict who has garnered fame through flatulence; Chino is a rapper turned actor; and Sandusky, the straight man, is the only one among them without flagrant insecurities.
Cockburn takes the advice of Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), the author of the movie's source novel, and decides to drop them all off in the jungle and shoot the rest of the movie guerrilla style. Cameras are placed in the trees and the actors must follow the script on their own.
The catch: the jungle is a real-life war zone called the Golden Triangle with a real-life drug gang called the Flaming Dragons. In one of the movie's funniest scenes, Cockburn is, well, disassembled and it's hilarious how Speedman continues to believe it's still a setup (listen for the line, "This is blood-flavored.") Only Lazarus believes the situation they're in is real, but Speedman is determined to stick to the script.
Speedman is eventually captured by the Dragons, who torture him into re-enacting his most maligned movie role, the titular character in Simple Jack, about a mentally challenged man who can talk to animals. That the Dragons actually like this movie (a play on I Am Sam) is meant to poke fun at the idea of how foreign audiences sometimes like what Americans consider Hollywood garbage. Speedman, recalling Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, starts to believe he's home because the Dragons accept him as a good actor. In the meantime, the others use the movie's screenplay to devise a rescue plan.
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