Stars:
*** 1/2
Rating: R for language,
violence and sexual references
Run
Time: 1
hour, 47 minutes
I’m a
sucker for a Hollywood that skewers its own – think “The Player”, “Get Shorty”,
and “Living in Oblivion”. As director, co-producer, co-writer and co-star of
the ultimate Tinseltown spoof it appears Ben Stiller agrees.
Narcissism
is the operative theme; Hollywood’s most bloated egos fronting an enormous
Vietnam epic while struggling to keep cast and crew in check.
Temperamental
director Damian Cockburn (Steve Coogan) is having trouble motivating his stars,
each more self-important than the next. Tugg Speedman (Stiller) is a washed-up
action star desperately clinging to his celebrity. Corpulent comedian Jeff
Portnoy (Jack Black) is attempting a “serious” film to clean up his image while
method actor Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.), a thinly-veiled Russell Crowe
with a stable full of Oscars, is searching for artistic motive and suffering a
massive case of identity crisis.
Their movie
is “Tropic Thunder”, based on the real-life memoirs of Vietnam vet Sgt. John “Four
Leaf” Tayback (Nick Nolte), or so he says. As production consultant Tayback is
scrambling for a tough-love approach to rouse the actors to new dramatic
heights. His suggestion is to shoot the film guerilla-style, gritty and dirty
with no handlers or assistants in sight.
To that end
the cast is dropped into hostile enemy territory, where their “assignment” is
to liberate a POW camp in a fiery ambush that will feel genuine on camera. A
slight run-in with a land mine leaves the troupe without direction –the
ultimate in impromptu theater.
This
pampered band of brothers is frightfully ill-prepared for a “Blair Witch
Project” meets “Apocalypse Now” kind of challenge. Speedman is more concerned
about the bad box-office of his dramatic debut “Simple Jack” (in which he plays
a mentally-challenged farmer who can talk to animals) than emoting over a
vicious Vietnamese druglord. Portnoy, veteran of the comic blockbuster “The
Fatties” just wants his stash back as he slips into pink-elephant withdrawals
and Lazarus is so deep into character (with surgically altered pigment to make
him look African American) he can’t get out.
The laughs
fly as fast and furious as enemy fire, courtesy of the heroin factory thugs
that take our boys hostage. Humor is rough and raunchy and dripping with conceit
as the actors mask their insecurities with the blustery bravado and macho posturing
so emblematic of fleeting fame.
Full
frontal assault belongs to Stiller and company but the rear is brought up by
some surprising comic talent – most notably Tom Cruise in a career-saving turn
as a monstrously vulgar producer who’s all about the bottom line. Matthew McConaughey
makes good as Speedman’s brown-nosing agent and Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride and
Brandon T. Jackson (as rapper turned actor Alpa Chino – say it fast) are
perfectly on-point as the beleaguered back-ups.
Best of
show belongs to Downey’s stirring discourse about handicapped performances that
have garnered Academy praise – horribly un-PC and wickedly funny. Ditto Stiller’s
rousing let’s-put-on-a-show address at the expense of his indisposed director. Honorable
mention to the film’s spoofy opening trailers, featuring each of the leads in
their most notorious onscreen role.