Tropic Thunder

Watching Tropic Thunder, I got the distinct impression that this all could have gone very, very wrong. It tippy-toes ever so carefully along the thin, wiggly, often blurry line between funny offensive and offensive offensive. It's easy to imagine that somewhere, perhaps in an alternative universe not too far from our own, there's a version of Tropic Thunder playing in theatres that will make you shit your pants in righteous outrage.

Don't feel too bad for the denizens of that universe, though. Scientifically we're not even sure they exist, and if they do maybe in their universe they got some decent Star Wars prequels and their version of Jessica Alba actually got naked like she was supposed to in Sin City. These things have a way of balancing themselves out.

Actually, Ben Stiller takes very few real chances in his making of a Vietnam war movie movie. The rightrope act is ultimately an illusion: On the surface there's a lot of blood, bombast, blackface, and use of the word "retard", but the bulk of the satire is directed at sociologically agreed-upon safe zones: The grotesque results of Hollywood's attempts to be subtle and meaningful through mawkish excess, and how their isolation from the rest of society at large has rendered them blind to their ignorance.

In the hands of Matt Stone and Trey Parker this material might have gotten pushed a little harder and its talking points might have been tweaked a little more, but Stiller is not Stone and Parker, or even one of them. That's not to put Stiller down: Just because Tropic Thunder is a little thin on depth, doesn't mean it skimps on the funny. For a guy whose last big hit was Night at the Museum Co Writer/ Director Stiller shows a remarkable willingness to take the targets he's allowed himself and tear them to hilarious shreds. In fact, other than Pineapple Express this is the funniest film I've seen this year.

The premise, in case you need to know it, involves a big-budget Hollywood production that has come to Vietnam to make a film adaptation of "Tropic Thunder", a Heart of Darkness analogue written by a grizzled apparent veteran (Nick Nolte). The film within a film has gone wildly over budget due in large part to the fact that the director (Steve Coogan) cannot control his overindulged self centered actors. (played by Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., and Stiller)

So at the suggestion of the author the director flys his leads into the jungle equipped with only a scene list and fake guns. There he plans to make an authentic "guerilla style" film which in this case seems to mean exploding stuff around them and filming their terrified reactions with hidden cameras. Beyond that it's not clear how he planned to make this into a coherent movie, since there seemed to be no arrangements made for extras to attack them so they'd have someone to shoot at, or any other crew present except the author and the overzealous pyrotechnics guy (Danny McBride) both of whom are miles away from the actors.

I guess none of that really matters since the plan falls apart nearly immediately, leaving the actors stranded in the jungle being stalked by a drug cartel who believe that they are DEA agents. Stiller's character, (Tugg Speedman, an action star past his sell by date), in turn thinks the drug dealers are day players and stunt men. His conviction persists long after his fellow actors, and indeed any sane person, would have realised the truth.

Downey Jr. once again turns in a superior comic performance as Kirk Lazarus, an Australian method actor who has his skin artificially darkened to play the role of a gunnery sergeant who also happens to be black. It seems preordained that of course RD Jr is one of the best things in the movie. The difference here is that unlike in Iron Man and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, he's given a role that's not just a riff the usual blithe, self-aware smartass he does so well, but something that's almost the flip side of those characters. Much of his screentime is spent playing the role within a role of a man so un-self-aware that it almost seems like he had his superego shut off while he was getting his pigment done. What could easily become an uncomfortable caricature instead is a cunning, almost affectionate, parody of an actor playing an uncomfortable caricature, but being too far up his own ass to realise it. Junior pulls this off so effortlessly that it's easy to forget what a misstep this role could have been.

But even that's not the most unlikely long shot in this film that pays off, that award goes to Tom Cruise, slathered with Rick Baker fat makeup, playing a borderline psychotic, bullying movie mogul. Displaying comic timing and range of which I honestly didn't think him capable in this day and age, Cruise simply walks away with the film every time his character appears to deliver an apocalyptic tone poem of obscenity. His wild, glassy stare is hypnotic and his rage is delivered with such earnestness that I sometimes wondered watching him if he was informed that he was in a comedy. Whatever he was doing, it worked.

Those two roles alone make the film worth going to see, but it also boasts a phalanx of comic ringers sprinkled throughout the cast, all of whom have something to add to the proceedings. Stiller even manages to extricate some great stuff from Matthew McConaughey, who in hell has done that lately?

Tropic Thunder might not be everyone's cup of tea, in many ways it's a throwback to the 90's when multi camera setups were soley the domain of sitcoms, improv was curtailed, and cartoonish characterizations roamed free across the plains. However, its success does prove that while it helps in this brave new world, a big studio can still make a good R-Rated comedy even if there's no one involved named Apatow.