Thursday, August 14, 2008
A+E, In this Issue..., Movies, Reviews

‘Tropic Thunder’ roars with laughter

If you need a good, raunchy laughfest and Judd Apatow’s let you down, “Tropic Thunder” is the summer comedy you’ve been waiting for...

If you need a good, raunchy laughfest and Judd Apatow’s let you down, “Tropic Thunder” is the summer comedy you’ve been waiting for.

Director Ben Stiller also stars as fading action star Tugg Speedman, whose bid for legitimacy, “Simple Jack,” was laughed off the screen. Speedman is one of a handful of actors—including comedian Jeff “Fats” Portnoy (Jack Black) and Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.)—starring in a Vietnam War epic, “Tropic Thunder,” directed by Englishman Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan), who has no business helming a major production.

That quickly becomes apparent to studio head Lee Grossman (Tom Cruise, all but unrecognizable), who threatens to pull the plug. At the suggestion of technical advisor Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), on whose memoir the film is based, Cockburn dumps the actors into the jungle to fend for themselves, observed by hidden cameras. Soon, they run afoul of Vietnamese antagonists—not ’60s Viet Cong, but modern-day heroin manufacturers.

Nothing about the movie business is sacred here, from egos to closets, incompetence, drug habits and cutthroat competition. But what’s funniest about this movie about the making of a movie is how seriously the actors (that is, the ones the real actors are playing) take themselves.

And then there’s Method actor Lazarus, who doesn’t “drop character,” he says, “until I’ve done the DVD commentary.” If the idea of Downey, an all-American Caucasian, playing an Australian playing a black man (with the help of “pigmentation alteration”) offends you, you’re so not ready for this movie. Stiller’s film is a laugh riot, not just the comedy of the summer but probably of the year. 3 STARS—Steve Warren