Tropic Thunder
Directed by Ben Stiller
Look past Tropic Thunder’s misleading marketing campaign, and it’s a movie about something director Ben Stiller well understands: the plight, insecurity and vanity of actors. He uncovers this idiosyncratic experience by going past the cynical mockery of professions in his previous films, The Cable Guy and Zoolander. Tropic Thunder displays keen insight (script by Stiller, Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen) about a team of actors in a stressful situation—what Nick Nolte as the gung-ho author of the source novel Tropic Thunder calls ìin the shit.î Stiller plays action-star Tugg Speedman, Robert Downey Jr. is Australian thespian Kirk Lazarus and Jack Black is superstar-comedian Jeff Portnoy who all are taken out of their Hollywood comfort zone to a Southeast Asian jungle to play U.S. soldiers in ‘Nam.
These pampered performers respectively seek a hit, awards and respect; and their self-serving mission is joined by two younger actors, Brandon T. Jackson as hip-hop mogul Alpa Chino and Jay Baruchel as fifth-banana Kevin Sandusky. Their director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) introduces them to guerrilla-style filmmaking that tests their improvisatory wits. When the reel war becomes real, these tabloid TV regulars suggest celebrity-era versions of the theatrical troupe in Lubitsch’s 1941 WWII comedy, To Be or Not To Be. But Stiller’s combat-of-filmmaking jokes avoid a metaphor for modern warfare (such as the recent, fatuous Iraq War doc Full Battle Rattle that ridiculed military bureaucracy). Instead, this war’s prospects of Oscar victory allow Stiller to go deep into actors’ fantasies and presumptions.
Back in “The World” (that is, Hollywood), their predicament is monitored and exploited by a studio system acting out its own self-interest. Unbilled performances by Matthew McConaughey as Tugg’s agent Rick Peck and Tom Cruise as studio boss Les Grossman are secret weapons; they undercut the behind-the-scenes smugness that has turned HBO’s Entourage into another example of vulgar Hollywood narcissism. At its best (especially when Cruise and Downey soar into the stratosphere) Tropic Thunder is as ruthless a Hollywood parody as The Big Knife—although, unlike that Robert Aldrich-Clifford Odets drama, Stiller’s cuteness cuts without being lethal. Its huge pleasure comes from exposing contemporary showbiz vanity as invidious. This real media war might be as precarious as the one in To Be or Not To Be.
Downey’s blackface performance is already near-mythic—deservedly so, since the Aussie Kirk Lazarus’ first blue-eyed appearance uncannily resembles the instantly canonized Heath Ledger. The conceited Lazarus then undergoes a medical pigment transformation (Variety describes it “Olivier as Othello black”) but the great joke is how he stays “in-character,” internalizing and projecting black macho clichÈs. Every line sparks: regarding his penis “That’s built just like bologna for some reason”; reciting The Jeffersons’ theme song; or repeating black GI bravado: “Ain’t nothin’ but a thang” (specifically from Hamburger Hill). Not a one-note joker, Downey’s Fred Williamson hairdo and sideburns illustrate actors’ multilayered vanity and the racial myths that have captured the world’s imagination.
Cruise’s role is equally audacious: Corpulent, bald, pilose and foul-mouthed, Grossman lives up to his name. The phony energy of the prig Cruise played in Magnolia gets channeled into a credible type whose pleasure in his own obscenity sets the tone for a shameless industry. Entourage’s corrupt personal agent is a glorified pet, but Grossman is an undisguised lout—the industry’s top pig. His eyeglass frames put devil’s horn shadows on his forehead—a cartoon of the rapacious studio exec, never before so sharp, ugly and hilarious. Grossman’s demand for “Diet Coke!” summons all the product we’re routinely sold. This caricature would seem sanctimonious if Cruise didn’t personify the era’s brazen joy by shaking his badonka-donk to Ludacris’ rude, greedy anthem, “Get Back.” Cruise shows amazing swagger.
All the performances boast ingenious details: The way Stiller’s Tugg goes from handsome to blockheaded in the proverbial action-movie manner. Nolte’s badass mania and Jack Black’s junkie’s hysteria (he’s actually subtle). They merrily—seriously—reveal the truth of the actor’s game. “We can diagram the source of the pain and not live it,” Lazarus explains; a reverberant insight. Much of Tropic Thunder’s bravura seems patterned after Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz, last year’s funniest film, which has been widely misunderstood as a movie parody. Hot Fuzz’s brilliance came specifically from updating the British social comedy, using American action films as a template for understanding English provincialism. (The same acumen is apparent in Edgar Wright’s TV series Spaced just out on DVD). Tropic Thunder reverses that process; Stiller’s use of movie culture diagrams how our view of our own history has changed.
Think about it: The opening series of mock trailers—like Grindhouse’s intermission—introduces a satirical tone that alerts our consumers’ awareness. Instead of showing off film-geek amusement about reviving a genre (like Tarantino’s solipsistic hipness in Grindhouse), Stiller’s send-up of the Vietnam War flick signals genuine, heretofore unacknowledged cultural revolution. His exact cinematic details—soldiers’ bravery, John Toll’s lush jungle vistas, evocative pop songs—mix with a carefree impudence that proves we’ve subsumed Vietnam’s agony and suffering. Danny McBride plays an F/X expert with a fanboy fetish for explosions, equating an Apocalypse Now–style napalm stunt with sex. The over-scaled action scenes ironically indicate that we’ve developed a disproportionate taste for violence (it’s excess slapstick, like in Get Smart.) Hollywood is so far past post-war guilt and anxiety that the sanctimony of films like The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now and Platoon are ripe for parody.
This is troubling until you realize Tropic Thunder’s (accidental) grasp of this cultural shift. By sporting a later generation’s indifference, Tropic Thunder is more instructive, more authentic, than any pop culture tribute Tarantino has ever done. Its behind-the-scenes humor sharpens our understanding about how movies exploit history. Stiller sketches comic idiocy so energetically it’s almost disappointing when the film settles into a plot; yet his skits relentlessly expose filmmaker hubris. It’s funnier and more coherent than anything Stiller has ever directed. Apparently, Stiller has gotten past his parodistic snark (the thing that ruined both The Cable Guy and Zoolander). No longer superior or indifferent to the media’s icons and symbols, Stiller finally is able to scrutinize them—with knowledgeable affection.
Directed by Ben Stiller
Look past Tropic Thunder’s misleading marketing campaign, and it’s a movie about something director Ben Stiller well understands: the plight, insecurity and vanity of actors. He uncovers this idiosyncratic experience by going past the cynical mockery of professions in his previous films, The Cable Guy and Zoolander. Tropic Thunder displays keen insight (script by Stiller, Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen) about a team of actors in a stressful situation—what Nick Nolte as the gung-ho author of the source novel Tropic Thunder calls ìin the shit.î Stiller plays action-star Tugg Speedman, Robert Downey Jr. is Australian thespian Kirk Lazarus and Jack Black is superstar-comedian Jeff Portnoy who all are taken out of their Hollywood comfort zone to a Southeast Asian jungle to play U.S. soldiers in ‘Nam.
These pampered performers respectively seek a hit, awards and respect; and their self-serving mission is joined by two younger actors, Brandon T. Jackson as hip-hop mogul Alpa Chino and Jay Baruchel as fifth-banana Kevin Sandusky. Their director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) introduces them to guerrilla-style filmmaking that tests their improvisatory wits. When the reel war becomes real, these tabloid TV regulars suggest celebrity-era versions of the theatrical troupe in Lubitsch’s 1941 WWII comedy, To Be or Not To Be. But Stiller’s combat-of-filmmaking jokes avoid a metaphor for modern warfare (such as the recent, fatuous Iraq War doc Full Battle Rattle that ridiculed military bureaucracy). Instead, this war’s prospects of Oscar victory allow Stiller to go deep into actors’ fantasies and presumptions.
Back in “The World” (that is, Hollywood), their predicament is monitored and exploited by a studio system acting out its own self-interest. Unbilled performances by Matthew McConaughey as Tugg’s agent Rick Peck and Tom Cruise as studio boss Les Grossman are secret weapons; they undercut the behind-the-scenes smugness that has turned HBO’s Entourage into another example of vulgar Hollywood narcissism. At its best (especially when Cruise and Downey soar into the stratosphere) Tropic Thunder is as ruthless a Hollywood parody as The Big Knife—although, unlike that Robert Aldrich-Clifford Odets drama, Stiller’s cuteness cuts without being lethal. Its huge pleasure comes from exposing contemporary showbiz vanity as invidious. This real media war might be as precarious as the one in To Be or Not To Be.
Downey’s blackface performance is already near-mythic—deservedly so, since the Aussie Kirk Lazarus’ first blue-eyed appearance uncannily resembles the instantly canonized Heath Ledger. The conceited Lazarus then undergoes a medical pigment transformation (Variety describes it “Olivier as Othello black”) but the great joke is how he stays “in-character,” internalizing and projecting black macho clichÈs. Every line sparks: regarding his penis “That’s built just like bologna for some reason”; reciting The Jeffersons’ theme song; or repeating black GI bravado: “Ain’t nothin’ but a thang” (specifically from Hamburger Hill). Not a one-note joker, Downey’s Fred Williamson hairdo and sideburns illustrate actors’ multilayered vanity and the racial myths that have captured the world’s imagination.
Cruise’s role is equally audacious: Corpulent, bald, pilose and foul-mouthed, Grossman lives up to his name. The phony energy of the prig Cruise played in Magnolia gets channeled into a credible type whose pleasure in his own obscenity sets the tone for a shameless industry. Entourage’s corrupt personal agent is a glorified pet, but Grossman is an undisguised lout—the industry’s top pig. His eyeglass frames put devil’s horn shadows on his forehead—a cartoon of the rapacious studio exec, never before so sharp, ugly and hilarious. Grossman’s demand for “Diet Coke!” summons all the product we’re routinely sold. This caricature would seem sanctimonious if Cruise didn’t personify the era’s brazen joy by shaking his badonka-donk to Ludacris’ rude, greedy anthem, “Get Back.” Cruise shows amazing swagger.
All the performances boast ingenious details: The way Stiller’s Tugg goes from handsome to blockheaded in the proverbial action-movie manner. Nolte’s badass mania and Jack Black’s junkie’s hysteria (he’s actually subtle). They merrily—seriously—reveal the truth of the actor’s game. “We can diagram the source of the pain and not live it,” Lazarus explains; a reverberant insight. Much of Tropic Thunder’s bravura seems patterned after Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz, last year’s funniest film, which has been widely misunderstood as a movie parody. Hot Fuzz’s brilliance came specifically from updating the British social comedy, using American action films as a template for understanding English provincialism. (The same acumen is apparent in Edgar Wright’s TV series Spaced just out on DVD). Tropic Thunder reverses that process; Stiller’s use of movie culture diagrams how our view of our own history has changed.
Think about it: The opening series of mock trailers—like Grindhouse’s intermission—introduces a satirical tone that alerts our consumers’ awareness. Instead of showing off film-geek amusement about reviving a genre (like Tarantino’s solipsistic hipness in Grindhouse), Stiller’s send-up of the Vietnam War flick signals genuine, heretofore unacknowledged cultural revolution. His exact cinematic details—soldiers’ bravery, John Toll’s lush jungle vistas, evocative pop songs—mix with a carefree impudence that proves we’ve subsumed Vietnam’s agony and suffering. Danny McBride plays an F/X expert with a fanboy fetish for explosions, equating an Apocalypse Now–style napalm stunt with sex. The over-scaled action scenes ironically indicate that we’ve developed a disproportionate taste for violence (it’s excess slapstick, like in Get Smart.) Hollywood is so far past post-war guilt and anxiety that the sanctimony of films like The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now and Platoon are ripe for parody.
This is troubling until you realize Tropic Thunder’s (accidental) grasp of this cultural shift. By sporting a later generation’s indifference, Tropic Thunder is more instructive, more authentic, than any pop culture tribute Tarantino has ever done. Its behind-the-scenes humor sharpens our understanding about how movies exploit history. Stiller sketches comic idiocy so energetically it’s almost disappointing when the film settles into a plot; yet his skits relentlessly expose filmmaker hubris. It’s funnier and more coherent than anything Stiller has ever directed. Apparently, Stiller has gotten past his parodistic snark (the thing that ruined both The Cable Guy and Zoolander). No longer superior or indifferent to the media’s icons and symbols, Stiller finally is able to scrutinize them—with knowledgeable affection.
