Tropic Thunder Review
Tropic Thunder tells the story of a group of actors filming a Vietnam War story; soon they find the action to be far more real than they wanted.
Tropic Thunder Movie Poster (c)Goldcrest Pictures
There’s no way around it; Tropic Thunder has the potential to be an incredibly offensive movie if played to the wrong crowd. With Robert Downey Jr. in black-face, the use of the word “retard” about 100 times in the film and enough swearing to fill a Soprano’s season, the potential is definitely there.
Thankfully, it is a very funny film and it’s at it’s funniest when it’s being most offensive. Ben Stiller has clearly gone all out here to make the ultimate war-comedy film (not to say he succeeds though). The budget and effects are closer to what one would expect to find in the style of Vietnam War movie Thunder lampoons, but at no point do they seize control of the film and take away from the characters we are asked (hard as it may be) to care about.
Stiller writes, directs and (of course) stars as Tugg Speedman. Tugg is the action-hero version of Stiller’s previous characters, lacking a real sense of perspective about the world around him. However Tugg is closer to Zoolander than he is to Dodgeball’s Whyte Goodman (one of my all-time favourite characters from any actor); he comes across as a nice, if dumb, guy. However Tugg Speedman doesn’t feature nearly as centrally to this film, and it is certainly closer to an ensemble piece than Zoolander and it benefits from it.
If anything, the movie’s two stars (and by that I mean ‘those who generate the most laughs’ … this is a comedy) are probably the two most famous actors in the film. For starters, Downey Jr’s Kirk Lazarus is fantastic, and one in the eye for a certain Mr Crowe. What makes him funny is everything that should make him controversial; a method actor who “doesn’t drop character ’til the DVD”, the majority of his laughs come from his interaction with Brandon T Jackson’s actually black rapper “Alpa Chino”. The set-up may be obvious, but it takes real skill to make this funny and not offensive.
Tom Cruise is in this film and is the second ’star’ of which I speak. He’s almost unrecognisable (indeed, my girlfriend took almost the full 107 min runtime to figure out it was him) and just lets loose in the role of ‘big-shot producer’. I’m being serious here; he is so good, and I laughed so often, that I’d probably rate this my favourite Cruise performance of all time. I’m almost ready to forgive him for the M:I series of films for this. He’s loud, he’s rude, he’s foul-mouthed (”a nutless monkey could do your job” is probably the only line that I can repeat here) and he’s funny.
The film can drag at times, it is by no means a perfect article, but when it’s funny it is very funny and it will be funny to different people for different reasons. Whilst one person may find Lazarus’ recollection of “before the war” hilarious, others will laugh at Jack Black’s pursuit of a bat. It’s a fairly scattergun approach, but it’s well worth seeing. Get some popcorn, take 2 hours to watch it and, like most Stiller films, you will be quoting it in the pub afterwards.
DVD-Film-Review.co.uk’s rating:
DVD-Film-Review.co.uk’s Users:
(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
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Film Information
Year: 2008
Length: 107 mins
Director: Ben Stiller
Stars: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr, Jack Black, Tom Cruise, Brandon T Jackson, Nick Nolte, Matthew McConaughey
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