While the boys of comedy are busy getting stoned, the men are going off to war. And it’s hilarious.
Ben Stiller (The Heartbreak Kid) takes a relatively rare step behind the camera for Tropic Thunder, and the result is a much more assured, consistently funny effort than his previous directing gig, Zoolander. Going from self-absorbed male models to self-absorbed male actors, Stiller and Co. find different ways to mine their comic vein and easily fill out a feature comedy.
Thunder’s best idea is also its most controversial: Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man) stars as white method actor Kirk Lazarus, who dyes his skin to play the role of a black sergeant in the war movie all the characters are starring in (also called Tropic Thunder). Downey’s role is really the spark holding the whole movie together; it draws the best and biggest laughs, and silly role or not, Downey absolutely disappears into the character. There is no sign of his trademark, screwball-paced charm. When he pulls his wig off, it takes a moment to remember it is really Downey playing this ridiculous character, laughably attempting to fashion a convincing African-American sergeant based mostly on pop culture stereotypes (He gets excited about cooking collard greens and quotes the theme song from The Jeffersons for inspiration).
The film has a number of other winning bits, but a few are really top-notch. The movie opens strong with hilarious fake trailers, first for action hero Tug Speedman’s (Stiller) ludicrously redundant franchise, Scorched (in its sixth iteration), and then for Lazarus’ award-winning medieval-priests-in-love film, Satan’s Alley. Other highlight bits include an explanation by Downey elaborating on why playing a “full retard” never results in an Oscar victory and the related adulation of the Vietnamese drug runners for Tug Speedman’s role as a retarded child in the failed Oscar-bait film Simple Jack (“You should have won the Oscar,” one of the drug runners tells him).
Tom Cruise’s (Lions for Lambs) role as the overweight, balding, pit bull studio exec Les Grossman seems to have been a bit over-hyped. Apart from putting the handsome Cruise in Stiller’s gross-out makeup, co-writer Etan Cohen (Idiocracy) and longtime actor, first-time scribe Justin Theroux (The Ten) can’t seem to think of anything funnier for Cruise to do than curse up a storm, until a certain hip-hop song comes on. What follows draws enough laughs to make up for the lackluster portion preceding it. Cruise, who had his own fairly public spat with the chairman of Viacom, Sumner Redstone, seems to relish the chance to play this down and dirty head honcho.
A good example of Tropic Thunder’s ingenuity and, for lack of a better word, depth is in the handling of the character Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson, Cuttin Da Mustard). An over-the-top rapper moonlighting in film, Alpa Chino is introduced through one of his music videos, his face next to two butts as he plugs his soft drink “Booty Sweat” and candy bar “Bust a Nut.” Alpa Chino could have just been an obnoxious character who relied on his rap persona for laughs throughout, but he reveals himself to be intelligent and not the hyper-sexed figure his media image suggests as the movie goes on.
There may be moments here and there that drag, but Stiller and Co. have managed to pack Tropic Thunder with enough surprises to keep the pace up. Not every joke hits, and there is, to some extent, an over-reliance on vulgarity in all the dialogue, as if saying something dirty enough should warrant a laugh by itself (Sorry folks, but South Park has the monopoly on that racket).
The bottom line, though, is Tropic Thunder is a really funny movie. For a comedy, this means mission accomplished. Tropic Thunder should have minimal competition as the last smash hit of the summer. Mark two this season for Downey, whose career comeback has reached the stratosphere and knows no boundaries – not even race.
dan.benamor@gmail.com
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
