Tropic Thunder

Starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jnr, Nick Nolte, Matthew McConaughey, Steve Coogan, Tom Cruise
Directed by Ben Stiller

Tropic Thunder is a mind-bendingly clever, massively ribald and hugely self-referential riff on Zoolander, only this time calling out Hollywood’s insane, big-budget expenditures and the vacuous tendencies of actors, not models (though let’s not split hairs). With a principle cast clearly revelling in hamming it up, and a sprawling support cast shining equally, it’s the neck snapping speed of the agile script that will make your head hurt. And Tom Cruise turns in the wackiest performance of his life – which is sure saying something.

This movie is ridiculous. Which isn’t to say it’s not also hilarious. More that its layer upon spoof-layer upon insidery spoof-layer joke-within-joke, does becomes a little exhausting at points along the way. It’s way meta, dude. Like when if ever you were a kid and you made a cake with your friends, you wanted to make what was clearly the Most Mind-Blowing, Most Badass Tasting Cake Ever. So into the chocolate mix goes M&Ms, and maybe a melted Mars Bar. Okay, I see what you’re doing. And what about a whole bag of those chewy little cars? Ah, Okay. And also, an entire block of chocolate. And then, we’ll melt caramel over the whole things once we’ve done the icing. Voila!

One thing we can safely surmise about Tropic Thunder, is that Russell Crowe will never, ever see it. What? Okay. The script penned by Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux and Etan Coen, cliff-noted: A brilliant, though nearly insane British director (Steve Coogan), is trying to complete filming on his epic war film based on the memoirs of screw-loose ‘Nam Vet with only hooks for hands (Nick Nolte). Production in the jungle is way over budget. A giant, multimillion dollar explosives sequences is ruined when petulant action star Tugg Speedman (Stiller) can’t cry on cue in his climactic death scene with Crowe stand-in and 5 times Oscar-winning Australian method actor Kirk Lazurus (Robert Downey Jnr). Kirk has dyed his skin black in order to authentically portray an African America soldier, much to the chargin of actual black actor and hip-hop megastar Alpa Chino (Brandon T Jackson), also playing a soldier. There’s Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), famed for his roles in a series of fart joke movies in which he plays multiple roles, a la Eddie Murphy. Jeff is also a raging heroin addict trying his hand at serious acting. All are then dropped in the Golden Triangle and left to fend for themselves. When a stunt designed to frighten a “real performance” out of them goes horribly awry, they are kidnapped by a Laotian drug cartel.

And that’s the first half hour. Rest assured that in the following hour, no sacred cow is left unslain.

Tropic Thunder is prefaced by a series of fake trailers which chart the fictitious careers of the fictitious leads with such pin-point accuracy that even the preview audience took a minute to work out they weren’t real. On the web the film birthed its own mini-universe, with fake sites for both the fake leads and their fake films, as well as an hilarious clip on YouTube where the real life versions of Stiller, Black and Downey parodied their attempt to create the ultimate viral video hyping Tropic Thunder, which unsurprisingly went viral. Our heads!

Back in the cinema, Ben Stiller does a more than passable imitation of a chiselled but dim (a combination he evidently loves) action star who aches to be taken seriously by critics -- doubly so after his film Simple Jack, about a retarded farm hand, bombed. Jack Black is given the bluest lines as the party hard bad boy trying to go cold turkey while tied to a tree in the middle of a poppy plantation. But it’s famed Method man Robert Downey Jnr, in his blue-eyed, blonde haired portrayal of the insufferably self-serious Kirk Lazarus (nee Maximus) -- who undergoes a “skin darkening” surgery to wholly transform into character -- who steals every scene. The “full retard” speech he gives Stiller, which perfectly skewers the absurdity of actors’ commitment to character, sums up the problem Tropic Thunder has with Hollywood specifically but also with film generally: what goes into creating the most “authentic” spectacle possible, at whatever cost -- whether personal or financial or both -- is indeed ripe for parody. The fact that Tropic Thunder itself cost upwards of US$100 million to produce is either taking this critique to the ultimate self-referential end, or best not thought about.

While very much worth seeing in the cinema for the dead-on impressive (see: expensive) action set-pieces ripped straight from Apocalypse Now (itself parodied in yet a further spoof pillorying Heart of Darkness, the making of Tropic Thunder mockumentary, Rain of Madness. Available only as a faux website) one can only imagine what kind of down-the-rabbit-hole life Tropic Thunder will lead on DVD, where all its metaverses will converge. As Robert Downey Jnr playing Russel Crowe as Kirk Lazurus playing Sergeant Osiris (just a dude playing a dude pretending to be another dude) at one point says, “I don’t break character until the DVD commentary!” It might all make sense then. In the meantime just enjoy it.

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