Ben Stiller is back!
Image Courtesy of IMPawards.com
Director: Ben Stiller
Notable Cast: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Tom Cruise, Robert Downey Jr.
Around the middle of this decade, Ben Stiller was on a roll. Everything he touched turned to gold, breaking $100 million per picture in domestic box office receipts alone. Several bad choices of films later and Stiller is at a crossroads. His remake of The Heartbreak Kid was a disaster, and the several pictures before that didn’t post tremendous box office receipts like they were projected to. He needs a hit to maintain his relevance as one of the few comedic actors who draw based on name alone, Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell being the others. A tremendous talent behind the camera as well, it would’ve been easy for him to make another film in the Meet the Parents franchise or recycle a character from a previous hit. He’s gone the more difficult road as he sets his sights on Hollywood with Tropic Thunder, which follows a group of actors in the middle of making a war film.
Tugg Speedman (Stiller) is an action hero looking to maintain his relevance after several box office duds including Simple Jack, about a retarded boy who inspires others, that some called “the worst movie ever made.”
Jeff Potnoy (Jack Black) is a comedian known for making films about overweight characters breaking wind. He’s also rumored to have a heavy drug problem.
Kurt Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.) is the world’s premier actor, winning an armful of Oscars and trying to put himself in position to win another. A blonde-haired Australian, he’s dyed his skin black to get into his character, who’s African-American.
The three are in the middle of making a film called Tropic Thunder, based on the exploits of a Vietnam War veteran and writer (Nick Nolte), when the three stars and their first time director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) end up in a quagmire of Apocalypse Now proportions. With overruns going up, the two of them hatch a pretty ingenious idea. Placing the actors in the middle of the jungle without any setup or trailers, as well as putting cameras and explosives all around them, the film is to be made “guerrilla-style” with real fear, et al. When they run into Asian drug smugglers, what began as a group of actors playing war becomes a war to save a captured friend.
Presented in a manner spoofing both Platoon and the Francis Ford Coppola classic, Tropic Thunder is presented as a farce except with the entire cast playing it straight. It makes for a markedly funny experience, and Stiller the director is in rare form taking shots at Hollywood. There are several markedly funny moments, including one where Lazarus and Speedman discuss Oscar nominations by actors playing mentally handicapped people, which take aim squarely at Hollywood but are also markedly funny. Stiller walks that fine line between satire and insult in a way one usually doesn’t see in Hollywood these days; he makes his point without having to be explicit about it. It’s refreshing to see nuanced film-making from Stiller, who certainly could be a high profile director if he focused just on that. It’s insanely funny all around, taking shots at everything and packing in plenty of little gags to go with big ones. Stiller also leaves his best for the final act, keeping the film’s story moving alongside the joke content.
The film, however, is carried by the sheer brilliance of Robert Downey as an Australian trying to act like a Southern African-American and playing it completely straight. This is an incredibly gutsy role, especially with him in what could be considered “blackface” for the entire film, but Downey makes it work to the point where any offensiveness is eliminated. Lazarus is a great actor who’s performing what he thinks if the ultimate in method acting; it doesn’t hurt that there’s Brandon Jackson as rapper Alpa Chino alongside him. Having someone of color alongside Downey makes the farce complete, giving him someone to play off and to be able to say the sorts of things that the audience is thinking.
Tropic Thunder also works because of the work of its supporting cast. Matthew McConaughey steps in for Owen Wilson in a role designed for the latter by Stiller, a personal friend, but manages to take a character completely out of his wheelhouse and make it entertaining. It’s not a strong comedic performance, as it relies on things geared towards Wilson’s manic style of comedy as opposed to McConaughey’s more relaxed style, but it manages to work. Coogan is a solid attachment, in a brief role, as the first time director of a huge budget, but the surprise of the film is Tom Cruise. Unrecognizable in a fat suit, bald cap and beard, Cruise shows up for the film’s best (and most shocking) foul-mouthed tirades and a sequence where he dances. Its sheer brilliance and completely different from what he’s known for.
Tropic Thunder is in the middle of August, a dead zone of films due to its time between the summer blockbusters and the fall awards season, but is easily one of the year’s funniest films and a triumphant return to glory for Ben Stiller. In an era where comics seem to start out more adult oriented and stray towards family films, it’s nice to see that Stiller still has it in him to make a profanity-infused comedy of epic proportions.
