Tropic Thunder (**)

Directed by: Ben Stiller
Starring: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Cruise, Steve Coogan, Nick Nolte, Jay Baruchel
Seen: September 5th 2008

** Out of ****

For a film that had such massive expectations and such incredible funny trailers, this was a relative disappointment. The Dark Knight seems to be the only film to be able to live up to the hype created before its release. We are definitely presented with some interesting and funny ideas in Tropic Thunder, but most of them feel underdeveloped and neglected.

Almost all of the potentially great comical elements of this film seem incomplete. Its as if Stiller had a 100 ideas that he just had to use in this film. I believe if he had trimmed that down to, say, 10 ideas, he could have run much further with them and really developed them to the same level as the comic genius we see apparent in Zoolander.

Stiller plays Tugg Speedman, the blockbuster star whose films have lately not performed like he would have liked to. He is also not incredibly intelligent, and this is beautifully mocked in two or three scenes between Speedman and Kirk Lazarus (Downey Jr.), where Lazarus accuses Speedman of playing his part of the retarded Jack too retarded. He should know that the great Hollywood actors do not go “full retard” for roles like this. From this also some of the controversy surrounding the film. Do people not get it? Mocking Hollywood for almost automatically awarding actors playing mentally challenged characters is not the same as mocking mentally retarded people…

Kirk Lazarus is an award-winning Australian actor who is so into the method acting scheme of things that he undergoes surgical treatment to colour his skin black in order to play the African American Sergeant Lincoln Osiris. Downey Jr. is fantastic as probably the best realised character in the entire film, could this be another nod at the ridiculous nature of some casting choices in Hollywood? Jack Black is Jeff “Fats” Portnoy, a comedian well-known for flatulence movies and jokes. Described as a portrayal of Chris Farley, I believe there’s also a decent amount of Eddie Murphy in there. Another quite memorable sideline joke near the end of the film surrounding Portnoy’s “money-maker”, as it is, almost passed everyone by.

Nick Nolte portrays John “Four Leaf” Tayback, the Vietnam war veteran upon whose book Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) bases the film within a film, tropic Thunder. When Cockburn gets fed-up with the utter ridiculousness of the stars of his film (Speedman, Lazarus, Portnoy), he and Tayback hatch a plan to drop them into the wild, and continue filming guerrilla style. The only glitch in the whole operation then becomes the plot of the film (not the film within a film though…), and the team stumbles into a real war-torn area, where the villains are real, but the team does not realise it. And of course, indescribably chaos ensues, with some comic moments, and some downright brutally violent moments.

You might also recognise Tom Cruise as the loudmouthed executive producer behind Tropic Thunder, Less Grossman. Together with Downey Jr., Cruise probably delivers the best acting in this film, outshining the headlining stars of the film in a cameo role. While watching him, however, you can’t help but wonder if the man has any semblance of a soul to be able to play a part like this as convincing. I guess we’ll never know…

In conclusion, the trailers had me and my friends up in stitches and incredibly excited about this film, but then we saw it, and were struck speechless at the sheer pointlessness of it all. Tropic Thunder will most likely not be remembered for long, at least not in my circle of friends. One critic actually called this an assault in the guise of a comedy, like being mugged by a clown.