This may be a bit ambitious on my part, but there are a handful of movies I want to see right now at the budget theater and this is the last week I'll have before things get really hectic with school and the holidays, so I'm going to try and have a week of big movie reviews here, culminating in seeing Quantum of Solace this Friday. But for today, we kick things off with the last of the big summer comedies I had yet to see, Tropic Thunder.
Directed by and starring Ben Stiller, this film is about a bunch of primadonna actors who are filming a war movie. Fed up with their attitude, the director leaves the actors out in the middle of the Vietnamese jungle to toughen up, all the while telling them that they are out there to shoot scenes for the movie. Don't worry, the movie is more straight-forward than I'm making it out to be.
Of course, one of the most talked about aspects of this movie before it was released was Robert Downey Jr.'s controversial role. He plays Kirk Lazarus, an award-winning Australian actor who undergoes a radical surgery in order to turn his skin black so that he could play the African-American sergeant. No doubt, you saw him featured prominently in the commercials for the film. Not only does he have the funniest moments in the trailer, but that is true of the whole film. This has truly been one amazing summer for Robert Downey Jr. and it is capped off with this masterful performance. He not only does a great job portraying a black man, but he has a really good Australian accent too. Seeing his performance is probably worth the price of admission alone.
But if you're looking for more beyond Downey's performance, the film ends up being a bit more hit and miss. I found this to be very similar to Zoolander, which not surprisingly, was also directed by Stiller. When the film is focused on satire, whether it be Hollywood here or the fashion industry in Zoolander, the film is extremely funny and smart. Stiller is very good at picking up on the nuances of the target of his satire and pointing them out in very comedic ways. This film opens with a series of trailers featuring the various actors in the film. Each are completely different, but they all perfectly capture the style and look of real trailers in that genre. There is also an Access Hollywood segment in the film which could easily have been about a real film; it is spot on.
However, once the film moves beyond satire and settles into its own actual story things start to fall apart. I just felt that the narrative wasn't strong enough here, even though I really liked the concept. For starters, most of the actors realize pretty quickly that they aren't filming a movie anymore and are in actual danger. While it's realistic, it took away a huge part of the film's humor. Only Stiller's character maintains the illusion that it is all part of the movie and a lot of his humorous interactions with the real environment are wrapped up in a montage. But for the rest of the characters, it just becomes a survival story which isn't all that interesting. Part of the problem there is that they've spent the first part of the film establishing that these actors are primadonnas, which doesn't make the audience really become invested in seeing them make it out alive.
A prime example of this is Jack Black's character, who is an overweight comedian with a heroin addiction. Personally, I didn't really enjoy the character or his portrayal of him. Now I realize the role was originally meant for Owen Wilson until he ran into his own personal problems, so I'm not sure if my attitude would change if he had actually been in the movie. Overall, I felt Black's portrayal was too real to be funny and too funny to be taken seriously, if that makes sense. I guess what I'm saying is that he needed to take it to one extreme or the other.
While the film lags in the middle, it does somewhat redeem itself in the end. There are some nice parrallels between how this movie ends and how their fictional movie was supposed to end; although this again seemed confusing because it appeared that they were mocking the ending of the Hollywood film, but wanted you to treat the end of this film seriously. Like Black's performance, the entire film needed to do a better job of seperating the meta references from their own actual plot.
One thing I would be remiss if I didn't point out is that there are several fun cameos throughout the film; something that is becoming the norm in today's comedies. There's Danny McBride, last seen in Pineapple Express, as an overzealous pyrotechnics expert. I previously had not found him particularly funny, but he has a lot of good lines here and his wardrobe is hilarious as well. Matthew McConaughey shows up as the agent to Stiller's character and has a funny running gag regarding TiVo. And finally, an unrecognizable Tom Cruise plays a crass executive. Cruise has some funny moments, but I wish the character would have played things a little bit more straight (no pun intended). Seeing Cruise as a balding, pot-bellied guy would have been funny enough. However, they added on some odd character traits that weren't as funny. It was as if the movie was trying to hard to make everyone think "Wow, look at how funny and cool Tom Cruise is being". It's a fun cameo, but they would have been better off with the 'less is more' mantra there.
There is one other small criticism I have with the film that may not matter to most people. But for some reason, I found it difficult to understand a lot of the lines that the characters were saying. Either they were too softly spoken or said so quickly, I couldn't process what they said. When you have a comedy where half of your jokes are of the verbal kind, this isn't a good thing. There may have been even more humor I missed just because of their delivery. Perhaps, this would have been avoided with a more polished director.
I think there is enough here to give this a recommendation. The Hollywood satire is top notch and Downey gives a hell of a performance that gives him an outside chance at an Oscar nomination. The film suffers from some story problems, but if you're just looking to be entertained, then that probably won't matter to you. Comedy is such a subjective concept as it is, that it is difficult to properly evaluate these films. I personally didn't find this as funny as some of the recent Apatow comedies, but I know that won't be true for everyone. That's why I made the Zoolander comparison earlier in the review. That's probably the best barometer for you. If you enjoyed that film, you'll likely have a good time with this one as well. Grade: B
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