Review: Tropic Thunder

I need to preface this review by making one statement: If you haven't watched the R-rated trailer for "Tropic Thunder" online, DON'T. While the all-audiences trailer and the commercials don't give away too much, the online trailer spoils some of the funniest scenes in the film. That being said, the summer's last big film is upon us, with a mountain of hype behind it, and the big question is, does "Tropic Thunder" hold up to all the buildup as a sort of fevered tent revival of studio comedy?

The answer is both yes and no. I hate to be so wishy-washy, but allow me to explain. The film's biggest strength and its greatest handicap lies within its central conceit: the idea that the only way to get a bunch of cliched actors (the waning action star, the perennial award-winner) to make a great war film is to stick them in an actual war zone. More importantly, writer-director-star Ben Stiller has taken aim at Hollywood itself, while making a film with a budget of $100 million within it. The best precedent to compare this idea to is Robert Altman's film "The Player," which was slammed upon its initial release for being too insular, too self-congratulating by the kind of people it was supposed to be a screed against. However, in the age of the Internet, more and more moviegoers are privy to every behind-the-scenes detail, and that's why a movie like this can exist: Everybody's now part of the big in-joke.

For as much as I've said about precedent, though, there is no real precedent for this movie. Good or bad, "Tropic Thunder" is unlike anything you've ever watched. It blends vicious satire with massive action setpieces, and throws in a surprisingly large amount of gore and some genuine plot twists for flavor. The film follows a cast of six men filming "Tropic Thunder," the most expensive war movie ever made. There is Tugg Speedman (Stiller), the action star whose attempt at an award-winning performance ("Simple Jack," the controversial-in-real-life story of a mentally handicapped farmhand) is critically lambasted, leaving him in need of a hit. There's also Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), an award-winner who gets so far into his performance that he has his skin dyed to play a black sergeant. The other "big name" is Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), a comedian known for playing multiple characters in fat suits and farting a lot. (Sound familiar?) The group is rounded out by rapper Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), who has serious issues with Lazarus' Method acting, and Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel), the sanest of the bunch. When their director (Steve Coogan) drops them in the woods to shoot the film, everything goes terribly awry, and the actors find themselves fighting for survival.

The film's biggest issue lies within the fact that the jungle scenes with the actors are the best part, but it takes the movie nearly a half-hour to get there, and then there are frequent cutaways to the mainland, where the film isn't nearly as entertaining. The biggest disappointment has to be the non-secret cameo by a semi-unrecognizable Tom Cruise as the foulmouthed studio head. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I really didn't find him funny; anyone who's seen the phenomenal film "Magnolia" has already heard Cruise do the profane, against-type character, and better.

Speaking of minority, one of the film's most controversial plotlines concerns Downey Jr. doing what is, more or less, blackface. This isn't meant as mockery, though; he's parodying actors who take themselves way too seriously. I know that with any satire, people who aren't smart enough to understand this will get offended; these are the same people who took Kevin Smith's "Dogma" to be blasphemy and tried to kill him a decade ago. This being said, the movie belongs to Downey, without a doubt. The most memorable and priceless lines are almost all his, and every time he appears onscreen, the film picks up a notch. This is also a bit of a hit against the rest of the movie, though, because Downey Jr. is so good that some of the other actors' performances, passable in another movie, don't hold up as well here. In particular, Stiller seems to think that his action-movie-guy comes off as a lot funnier than he really does.

There are also plotlines involving heroin addiction, a Vietnamese cartel that starts taking hostages and a super-agent desperate to get Tivo for Speedman, in addition to a multitude of other celebrity cameos. For a film that's only 106 minutes long, there is a ton happening, and this is another weakness. Most of the time, before you can really appreciate a good joke, the film has already moved on to three more. There are sporadic moments of gut-busting hilarity, surrounded by a bit too much heavy-handed satire. If Stiller would have focused his script more on the actors, and didn't try to attack everything about Hollywood all at once, the film would have probably played better.

After watching "Tropic Thunder," I was reminded of another film from two years ago, "American Dreamz," a satire that virtually nobody saw in theaters or otherwise. Both films had genius premises, but collapsed under the weight of trying to live up to them. While "Thunder" is a better film, it is just a bit of a disappointment with respect to how funny it's been made out to be. However, don't let me dissuade you. The film is a must-see just for Robert Downey Jr.'s performance, and when the film nails a good joke, it's as hilarious as anything else that's come out this year.