Reviewed by Rebecca Gordon
Stars Ben Stiller, Robert Downey, Jr, Jack Black, Steve Coogan, Nick Nolte, Bill Hader, Tom Cruise,
Danny McBride, Brandon T Jackson, Jay Baruchel | Written by Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux & Etan Cohen
UK certification 15 | UK RRP £19.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 122 minutes | Directed by Ben Stiller
His latest comedy project may be as subtle as its opening pyrotechnics, but if lashings of unchallenging humour, over-the-top characters and all-out action’s what you’re looking for, Ben Stiller’s the man to provide it.
Produced, directed, co-written and starred in by the versatile funny man, Tropic Thunder’s ridiculously unrestrained mockery of the entertainment industry pokes fun at Hollywood big shots with a similar silliness to Zoolander’s send up of the fashion world. Taking as its victim the sentimental and insistently jingoistic war movie, Tropic Thunder features Stiller as fading box office ego Tug Speedman who, alongside fellow A-listers Kirk Lazurus and Jeff Portnoy (Downey Jr. and Black), is to lead the hotly anticipated WW2 flick ‘Tropic Thunder’. Failing to coax his stroppy cast to cooperate, bungling director Damien Cockburn (played fleetingly by Steve Coogan) makes a last ditch attempt at theatrical realism by dumping his stars deep in the camera-filled Vietnamese jungle. The senseless troop of luvvies are left to navigate their way through the hostile undergrowth, but more importantly to conquer self indulgent career insecurities brought on by a mutual ego-bashing.
Despite the obvious pop at the conceited nature of celebrity, the calibre of have-a-go stars willing to ridicule their involvement in the profession is dazzling, beginning with a brilliant series of trailers openly mocking all that is tasteless/pretentious/downright rubbish about Hollywood’s sensational film industry. An Eddie Murphy-esque Jeff Portnoy fronts low-brow comedy ‘The Fatties’ while art house style flick ‘Satan’s Alley’ stars a brooding Kirk Lazarus as a gay monk - hilariously overplayed moments of blockbuster spoofery which make a promising start to the film.
However, Tropic Thunder fails to live up to it’s opening scenes, subsequently descending into a dragging plotline of ludicrous stunts and gross-out comedy, lacking the edge needed to parody the narcissistic world of showbiz. Performances from Downey Jr. as a die hard method actor living his role as an African-American soldier to the point of a surgical skin-darkening process, and the notoriously uptight Tom Cruise’s sparkling cameo as balding big shot Les Grossman are indeed also flashes of genius, and subsequent Golden Globe nominations for the pair are proof of this, but even these comical interludes do not quite make up for an overly nonsensical and ironically big budget plot in this silly spoof.
EXTRAS **** Sweet: we get not one, but TWO audio commentaries — the Filmmaker Commentary, with Stiller, Justin Theroux, Stuart Cornfeld, Jeff Mann, John Toll and Greg Hayden; and the Cast Commentary, with Stiller, Black and Downey Jr. Plus a bunch of deleted and extended scenes, plus an alternate ending, all with audio commentary, plus an introduction. They haven't skimped on the behind-the-scenes featurette front, either — there's Before The Thunder (where the idea came from, pre-production and stuff), The Hot LZ (shooting the opening battle scene), Blowing Shit Up (blowing shit up), Designing The Thunder (designing and building the sets, and so on), The Cast of Tropic Thunder (interviews with the main blokes what is in it), Rain of Madness (a "documentary" about the making of the "film"), Dispatches From The Edge of Madness (more from the "documentary" about the making of the "film"). There's also video of rehearsals, a make-up test with Tom Cruise, a video clip from the MTV movie awards and Full Mags — raw footage of some of the scenes.