Tropic Thunder

More stars than you can shake a stick at.

It used to be so easy when it came to comedy films. People wrote funny stuff, people acted it out, audiences laughed.

So where did it all go wrong? When did it all become about romantic comedies and post-ironic alleged spoofs of comedies that weren’t bleeding funny in the first place.

It’s a big pat on the back then to Tropic Thunder, a film which doesn’t quite sustain its central premise, which completely under-uses one of its key cast members and which occasionally falls flat but remains, for a good 70 per cent of its slightly overlong running time, genuinely, painfully funny.

The central premise is the highest of high concepts. A group of mollycoddled and / or pretentious actors are shooting a big budget, deadly serious Vietnam movie. For many of the cast, particularly fading action star Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller) and drug-addled, not-as-funny-as-he-used-to-be Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), this is the last chance of critical success. For method-to-the-point-of-consumption four time Oscar winner Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.,) it’s a chance to try something he’s never tried before: skin-pigmentation to play an ‘authentic’ black soldier. For arrogant rapper Alpa Chino (Brandon T Jackson) it’s a chance to diversify. And for the young British director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) it’s a nightmarish, uncontrollable collection of divas pushing his film way over schedule and budget.

With studio head Les Grossman (Tom Cruise, in a career-reviving cameo) demanding results or, probably quite literally, his balls, Cockburn — and Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), the man whose memoir the film is based on — strike a plan: stop these divas playing soldiers and turn them into soldiers. Leave them in the jungle with a few hidden cameras and a list of the scenes they need to get and make the film guerrilla-style. It’s a great idea or would be if: a) Cockburn didn’t then step on a stray mine and blow himself into so much mince; and b) the actors hadn’t been dropped into the middle of Asia’s busiest heroin operation. The cast are expecting cinematic trickery so when the gunfire starts, it’s clearly just FX. Only it isn’t.

Following so far? Relax, it’s a lot easier in ‘real time’ although you can expect to miss chunks of dialogue through laughing. And when was the last time that was an issue? The first hour, in particular, is a rapid fire collection of genius moments, throwaway gags and quotable lines, from the pre-credits ‘coming attractions’ (spot-on trailers for Speedman’s action saga Scorcher and Satan’s Alley, Kirk’s tale of forbidden monk love) to Lazarus giving Speedman Oscar-winning acting tips: “you never go full retard!”

Offensive? Some will find it that way, from that acting lesson to Downey’s black face make up, but it’s not outrageous for the sake of outrageous: for the most part, it’s simply pointed luvvie-satire. And even if it is offensive, it is at least funny and offensive.

Sadly, the pace and ideas dry up part way through and Jack Black gets very little to do other than go through intermittent comedy cold turkey so the diverse plot strands flail around embarrassingly for a few minutes somewhere in the middle. However, Stiller the director pulls it back together for a highly chucklesome climax. However flawed it may be though, this is the most successful, gleefully silly sustained attack on the funny bone for ages.

3.5/5

This review was brought to you by Screenjabber.com

share this story: