Tropic Thunder is this summer's alleged bust-out hilarious Hollywood lampoon the same way America's Sweethearts was several years ago. I'll concede that Tropic Thunder is funnier than America's Sweethearts - it's rawer and more raucous, and the stars involved are willing to go somewhat farther in skewering themselves and their colleagues. But is it really this poison arrow straight into the heart of Hollywood egomania? It's an arrow, just not a poison one - into the spleen maybe or perhaps a kidney. It leaves the heart entirely intact and that's kind of my issue with it. The film's not saying, "Hollywood is filled with ego-driven assholes who only care about profits and perks and landing primo tail;" it's saying, "Hollywood is filled with people who seem like ego-driven assholes who only care about blabbity-blah but underneath they're really good people who care about each other and isn't it lovely that we can all laugh at ourselves?" Like an actor in a fake fight, Tropic Thunder winds up big and showy but pulls its punch at the last second. I don't really blame Ben Stiller for it either. You think he wants to alienate the people he may one day need to bankroll Zoolander 2? Of course not. He wants to make fun of them but he also wants to flatter them. He knows how to invite them in on the joke - he gives them a chance to show what sports they are, then pats them on the back for having big hearts inside their puffed-up chests.
I could respect the movie more if it seemed like a real sucker-punch - if it seemed to dish all sorts of dirt - but the targets are really just the same old targets: dimwitted action stars trying to "stretch;" crazy Oscar-winning thespians all full of pretension; nutmunch directors and ass-kissing agents and hairy studio bosses with no souls. The story takes us to Vietnam where a group of Hollywood heavyweights are shooting a war movie based on a best-selling real-life 'Nam War account: Stiller plays Tugg Speedman the washed-up action hero, who is trying to rekindle his career by playing a "serious" role opposite the absurdly acclaimed and self-important Aussie Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.). Lazarus has already played everything, including Neil Armstrong and a homosexual medieval monk - so there's nothing left but to surgically change himself into a black man (of course). There's also a fat strung-out comedian named Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) who has made a name for himself with an Eddie Murphy multiple-role routine that is just an excuse for rampant flatulence (as if one needed an excuse). The director, Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan), is a stage guy who's in over his head on this huge mega-production. Having no idea how to get decent performances out of his absurd cast, Cockburn takes the advice of the book's writer, Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), a grizzled Vietnam vet who convinces him to drag his pampered cast into the real jungle and shoot the movie guerrilla-style. Here's where the premise begins straining itself: Cockburn exits the scene prematurely, leaving his actors stranded in the jungle and surrounded by heroin growers who think they're DEA agents. The actors have to become "real soldiers" to survive, but of course they're prissy and spoiled and disaster soon befalls them. This is the setting for what is ostensibly a scathing attack-job on show biz and all its foibles.
There's nothing especially wrong with squeezing these particular zits all over again - except that there's a big-ass tumor that needs ripping out, and no one quite has the guts to go in and get it. Fine - I'll accept Tropic Thunder on its own somewhat cowardly terms. I'll talk about how amusing Ben Stiller is as the Tom Cruise-type action star whose big Oscar-grab retard performance fizzled, who's now trying to prove himself by playing a war hero in a giant prestigious epic that's not even a sequel. Stiller is the master of ingratiatingly half-mean performances. He plays stupid in a smart way that never seems condescending and never makes you say, "Yeah, but he's letting some smarts squirt out so we'll know he's only pretending." He knows we know he's only pretending - plus there's something about his face that makes him uniquely qualified to play likable vapidness (he looks degenerate and monkeyish). And did I mention the bold move of actually casting Tom Cruise in a movie that partially lampoons Tom himself? Tom plays the evil movie mogul Les Grossman (Jewish name, but nary a hint of Jewish stereotyping). Tom may be trying to send up every fat, bald, evil bastard he's ever met, but mostly he's just milking the idea of himself in such a role. And the movie milks the same idea too. The actual performance is blah. Tom curses a lot and does an awkward hip-hop dance, but nothing he does is actually funny by itself, and Grossman never emerges as the sharp satiric sketch he might've been in the hands of a real actor.
I called the Cruise casting a "bold" move, but I was being sarcastic. It might've been bold had Stiller's performance really targeted Cruise, but it only does so vaguely - Stiller and company don't have the balls to get into Scientology madness and gay rumors and all that other Cruisian stuff. It soft-pedals; and there are other seemingly great ideas that never come together either. Take Robert Downey, Jr. as Lazarus, the Australian artiste attempting the insane stunt of transforming himself into a brother. Downey is funny with his low voice and jive-talk, but the joke is supposed to be how offended the one real black guy in the cast is at the outrageousness of a white man stealing the role he should've gotten. Here is the stuff of wild, boundary-pushing comedy right? In a gutsier movie, yes - in this one? A mild poke at the PC crowd is all we get. Of course the other black guy, a rapper named Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), is smarter than the preening ghetto travesty he plays in his commercials hawking a soda called Booty Sweat. No attempt is made to burst the balloon of a hip-hop culture that's grown as full of itself as white-dominated Hollywood ever was. Truth is, the movie doesn't seem sure what to do with Alpa - once you get past the name and a couple of okay exchanges with Lazarus, all that's left is a lame tip-toe job around and away from anything that might genuinely offend anyone (He's gay? Really? Gosh...).
The sad truth, movie-going public, is that political correctness has denutted even our politically incorrect movies. Stiller gets laughs as a bad actor pretending to be mentally challenged, but the blow is cushioned because, as Stiller has taken pains to point out, the joke isn't on retarded people at all, it's on actors who think they can win awards for playing retarded people. The film-within-a-film premise is not some great crackling comedic dynamo ready to send off sparks but a kind of dampening device. There's no racial humor - there's humor about the idea of racial humor. The only way to be mildly risque in a big Hollywood movie, apparently, is to come at everything from a safe angle, throwing off a reflection that to some people looks sharper and harsher than it is. It's done with mirrors. It's not as cute and narcissistic and limp as America's Sweethearts, but neither is it the grenade in the tailpipe of Hollywood some have tried to portray it as. It's barely more diverting than the crass, bloated extravaganzas it wants to score points off of, and many of its big laughs come from routines scarcely less debased than the gross ass-obsessed antics of Portnoy the fart-king (when in doubt go low and swear a lot). Hollywood should stick to making Batman movies and leave the satire to South Park.
