When action movie star Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), serious 'ak-tor' Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr) and troubled comedian Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) converge in the jungle to shoot an epic war flick, it soon becomes apparent to rookie Brit director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) that to get the best out of these pampered A-listers he is going to need to do something radical.
So, on advice of the film's battle hardened inspiration 'Four Leaf' Tayback (Nick Nolte), Cockburn drops his acting troupe into the middle of an actual war zone and sets the cameras up - guerrilla style!
How will a bunch of Hollywood primadonnas handle the real horrors of war, with no silk sheets to sleep in and no mocha-lattes for breakfast? How do you think? Badly.
They say:
Empire: “Downey Jr’s Kirk Lazarus is instantly up there with the comedy greats.”
Variety: “A smart alecky sendup of Hollywood and action films in particular.”
Time magazine: “The brain gets the joke; the ribs are untickled.”
We say:
Ever think you've seen a trailer that’s going to be better than the actual film? We did, we worried that Tropic Thunder couldn't possibly live it up to the wham bam, super cool sniggers of the preview - and whaddya know? It didn't.
Ben Stiller has directed, co-written and starred in a picture that has plenty of action, plus the odd quotable line ("I don’t read the script, the script reads me”), but not a lot of laughs. Being as he has apparently made a comedy, we see this as somewhat of a problem.
Stripping away the fundamental reasons why Tropic Thunder fails - too long, too spineless, too many bland peripheral characters - what it ultimately boils down to is that the script isn't very funny. It's lazily written, Stiller and co-scribes Justin Theroux and Etan Coen nail one decent gag (Lazarus' monk love movie trailer) and then raid the Saturday Night Live archives for twenty minutes ‘till the next (the last time you see Steve Coogan - which you won't see coming).
The jokes are dated too – mainly loud farts (lampooning The Nutty Professor? What is this, 1996?!), rubber entrails and a plethora of weak jabs at the Hollywood system. Studio execs are bastards? No! Actors take coke occasionally? Good Lord, we'd never have guessed! Danny McBride's special FX nut wins out every time however. Pasty, fat and missing an ear, his hilarious and sometimes sympathetic performance even eclipses Robert Downey Jr doing Vaudeville.
Though we're not taking anything away from the Iron Man here, his mixed up Lazarus is a memorable creation, even if the mirth potential surrounding his 'blackness' is not explored past a few unimaginative crawfish and n-word gags.
Tom Cruise provides some much needed mid-film titters in a sweary and mildly subversive (providing you're in on the joke) cameo. If Stiller's direction were tighter on his tumbleweed rap dancing scenes, it could have been an even snappier turn.
Following the seven years since Zoolander, which is, at best, risible after five pints, Ben Stiller hasn't really grown much as a comedy filmmaker. He can do battles and pyrotechnics, no worries there, Tropic Thunder has more explosions than Krakatoa, yet he can't make 'em laugh - not consistently and not for near on two ponderous hours.
Stiller has achieved one thing with this movie, he’s rung the death knell for mega budget action comedies. The Last Action Hero, Evan Almighty - quite simply the genre doesn’t exist.
CAST
Ben Stiller
Robert Downey Jr
Jack Black
Steve Coogan
Jay Baruchel
Tom Cruise
DIRECTOR
Ben Stiller
TIME
107 mins
POSTED...
Thu 18 Sep 2008 at 10:36am
