Tropic Thunder

Given all the online love it’s receiving, I went into Tropic Thunder expecting a real comedic treat. Unfortunately, the film is one of the most overrated of the year.

Don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of funny moments – but Tropic Thunder isn’t continually laugh-out loud hilarious, as some people would have you believe. You won’t be quoting this one years later, as you would with Ben Stiller’s last acting-writing-directing attempt, Zoolander. In fact, 5 minutes after leaving the cinema, Tropic Thunder had already slipped mostly from my mind.


This said, the film opens very strongly with a series of spoof adverts and trailers that go a long way towards explaining the roles the main characters fill in Hollywood. There’s action star Tugg Speedman (Stiller), who is trying to diversify his career after an endless run of soulless sequels; multi-award winning Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), an acclaimed Method actor modelled on Russell Crowe; and troubled comedian Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), whose main claim to fame is gross-out comedy franchise, The Fatties – heavily inspired by Eddie Murphy’s The Nutty Professor. Finally there’s rapper Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), who is continually pimping his energy drink and chocolate bar brands, Booty Sweat and Bust-a-Nut.

While working on massively expensive Vietnam film, Tropic Thunder, the prima donna behaviour and ego clashes of these stars cause production costs to spiral out of control. Desperate to save his film, novice director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) accepts a plan to film the movie guerrilla-style, dumping his actors in the jungle, and filming their interactions. The problem is that, unknown to Cockburn or his actors, there are heavily armed heroin smugglers in the area.

The main actors are all in top form in Tropic Thunder – although I did sometimes struggle to understand what was being said by Downey Jr’s growling, guttural Lazarus (who, playing a black sergeant, refuses to step out of character). I especially enjoyed Jack Black's performance as his character is sent into an aggressive frenzy by severe drug withdrawal. It’s refreshing to see Black add some darker layers to his normally cuddly onscreen persona.


Plenty of other stars also pop up in Tropic Thunder. The cast includes Nick Nolte as a moody Vietnam veteran, Matthew McConaughey (replacing the suicidal Owen Wilson) as Speedman’s agent, and an almost unrecognisable Tom Cruise as an overweight, overly hirsute and overly abusive studio head.

McConaughey and Cruise receive a surprising amount of screen time, which is a major miscalculation on the film makers’ part. Viewers are pulled away from the enjoyable jungle action and transported instead to greedy, immoral Hollywood where these 2 actors become a painfully unfunny distraction. If Cruise had been restricted to his initial 3-minute cameo at the beginning of Tropic Thunder, it would have been fine. However, his role just keeps growing and growing, and his dance sequences (he actually has more than one!) feel very forced; a desperate attempt for laughs.

When will film makers learn that as much as some of us love movies, we actually don’t enjoy "behind-the-scenes" glimpses at the often painful process of getting films made?

As much as I enjoyed Tropic Thunder’s start, its various in-jokes and especially its assorted digs at other iconic Vietnam movies, including Platoon and Apocalypse Now, I didn’t think the film was nearly as funny as it could have been. Don’t buy into the hype. Go to this one with low expectations.

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