Cast: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey, Jr., Anthony Ruivivar, Jay Baruchel, Brandon T. Jackson; Director: Ben Stiller; Producers: Stuart Cornfeld, Eric McLeod, Ben Stiller; Screenwriters: Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux; Music: Theodore Shapiro; Editor: Greg Hayden; Genre: Action/Adventure/Comedy; Cinematography: John Toll; Distributor: Dreamworks Distribution; Location: Hawaii, USA; Running Time: 107 min.;Technical Assessment: 3
Moral Assessment: 2
CINEMA Rating: For mature viewers 18 and above
Tropic Thunder is a movie about how an award-winning movie, “Tropic Blunder”, is made. It opens with trailers meant to establish a trio of characters who are supposedly three of the actors in the movie being made: once box-office king and now fading action star Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), withdrawing drug addicted actor known for fart humor Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), and pretentious Oscar-winning actor Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.). The movie they’re supposed to be making is based on a story about a Vietnam War hero, and its director is Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan). When a premature explosion damages the set beyond repair, Cockburn cannot accept that the filming is cancelled. The actors are led into the wild, believing there are cameras hidden everywhere to film whatever they’re doing. But they run into the territory of Asian heroin dealers led by a precociously ruthless 12 year old boy (Brandon Soo-Hoo). Speedman is captured, and in the actors’ attempt to rescue him, they realize they are now facing real guns while they have nothing but fake ones.
Tropic Thunder spoofs Hollywood , and in that sense it is an almost effective satire that can be funny at times. It’s a movie that knows movie-making and exposes the quirks of movie directors, actors and their agents, acting, trailers, movie props, writers, nearly all people involved in this ego-driven industry. It would get the loudest laughs—or boos—from movie people themselves, or viewers who are familiar with movie people; otherwise viewers will miss the sting, or the many references that only movie buffs will catch. If you didn’t know that Tropic Thunder is a movie of a movie, you’d think those trailers opening the movie are real. Stiller, Black and Downey , Jr. are in top form, and newcomer Soo-Hoo is such a scene stealer you wonder what his next movie role would be. Big names Nick Nolte and Tom Cruise among others play surprise cameo roles, a gimmick to say this movie is big time.
The posters claim Tropic Thunder is PG13; CINEMA thinks it’s for adults only. In the first place, if you’re not such a movie-lover, why bother to see a movie of a movie that aims to take digs at movie people and movie business? To cringe at the sight of fake blood (spurting from a bottomless pit)? To puke over fake guts (lengths of bloody sausages, yuck!)? To get your eardrums blasted and bleeding from “nonstop rough language and profanity, crass expressions…scatological humor and frank sexual references”? (Quoted from the review of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops). What CINEMA noticed that is not in the reviews we have read of the critics who praised Tropic Thunder is its veiled irreverence towards the Christian religion. One of the fake trailers opening the movie looks like a Da Vinci Code remnant, showing in powerful images medieval Catholic monks in a “sinful” relationship. Twice, too, Stiller (whose role here smacks of a naive sacrificial lamb) spreads his arms as though crucified, while the wailing background music apes that in Passion of the Christ. For your information, Stiller’s father Jerry Stiller is Jewish, while his mother, Irish Catholic Anne Meara, converted to Judaism after marrying his father. Ben Stiller starred, co-wrote, co-produced and directed Tropic Thunder. Not that we’re being such a grouch, but doesn’t this somehow give us a clue as to where the movie is coming from?
