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The Dartmouth
March 29, 2024 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Ben Stiller's 'Tropic Thunder' offends some, delights many

Despite offending some groups, Tropic Thunder is a comedy success.
Despite offending some groups, Tropic Thunder is a comedy success.

I'm guessing they were all too busy laughing. Although "Tropic Thunder" is a film of extraordinarily poor taste, it is also deliriously entertaining -- an incendiary satirical bullet fired into the heart of Hollywood's bloated ego.

The movie was directed, produced and co-written by Ben Stiller, an actor who knows a thing or two about Hollywood narcissism and has spared no expense (or racial stereotype) in roasting his fellow show people. You won't see a more politically incorrect film this year, but you're unlikely to see a funnier one, either.

Stiller plays Tugg Speedman, a washed-up action star whose recent foray into dramatic territory -- playing an autistic stable-boy in the ominously titled "Simple Jack" -- has left his flailing career on the edge of disaster. Hoping to win back his box-office appeal, Tugg agrees to star in a Vietnam War movie called "Tropic Thunder," under the direction of a neophyte British auteur named Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan). Also starring in the film-within-a-film is Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black, in meltdown mode), a comedian whose qualifications include flatulence and an insatiable appetite for heroin. Portnoy's addiction leads to one of the film's more alarming sequences, in which Jack Black devours a live bat to retreive the misplaced drugs contained therein.

There's also Kirk Lazarus, an Australian method actor so devoted to his craft that, when cast as the war movie's African-American sergeant, he undergoes a surgical procedure to literally dye himself black. The credits claim that Lazarus is played by Robert Downey Jr., but there's really no way to be sure -- buried beneath an outrageous makeup job, his voice transformed into a throaty, warbling baritone, Downey disappears into one of the strangest comic performances ever conceived. The sight of a major star dipped in blackface will likely draw fire from certain corners, but the portrayal offers a useful litmus test for the film as a whole; by the time Lazarus starts crooning the theme song to "The Jeffersons" as a gesture of fellowship to an African-American colleague, you'll either be weeping with laughter or storming out in disgust.

As production on the film-within-a-film begins to spiral out of control, the frustrated director undergoes something of a nervous breakdown, bundling his actors into a helicopter and depositing them in the middle of the Vietnamese jungle. "Let's go make the greatest war movie ever!" Cockburn proclaims before an unforeseen landmine relieves him of his directorial duties.

Believing their leader's explosive departure to be a motivational stunt ("That's not a real severed head!" insists Speedman, licking the bloody stump for emphasis), the actors set off into the jungle, where they run afoul of a Southeast Asian drug cartel. I will not reveal the rest of the plot, save to hint that it involves explosions, dismemberments, and the imaginative misuse of a TiVo.

The ensuing antics are peppered with all manner of cheeky intertextual allusions, with targets ranging from "Apocalypse Now" to "Forrest Gump." This sort of referential, pop-saturated comedy usually falls flat, but "Tropic Thunder" manages to succeed by transforming pop from a subject of parody into a target for satire. When Speedman tries to boost the morale of his fellow actors with lines like, "There could be a Teen Choice Award in this for you!" one senses the thinly-veiled bitterness of an actor-director who has been forced to attend one too many MTV award ceremonies. This sort of incisive self-awareness frequently excuses the film's more abominable subject matter -- Downey's one-man minstrel show, for example, is less an attack on African Americans than a lampooning of oblivious thespian egotism.

That's the mad genius of "Tropic Thunder." It's a Hollywood vanity project created by folks with enough good humor to make merciless fun of themselves. Take, for example, the presence of Tom Cruise -- Hollywood's resident poster child for the excesses of stardom -- who shows up in an inspired cameo role as a sociopathic studio executive.

Cruise's hammy turn is just one of the many pleasures to be found in the supporting cast, which also includes Matthew McConaughey as a Hollywood agent whose enthusiasm is matched only by his vapidity. Which is to say that it's pretty much the same as every other McConaughey performance, only intentionally so.

The film's most revelatory talent, however, is Stiller himself, for whom "Tropic Thunder" may signal a career shift from anointed Hollywood star to A-list director. Neither Stiller's nebbish onscreen persona nor the mediocrity of his past three directorial efforts have hinted at the madcap brilliance of this latest accomplishment.

"Tropic Thunder" is an excruciatingly funny movie, but it's also surprisingly well made. One is struck by Stiller's craftsmanship, his unexpected mastery of framing and visual composition.

But to extol the technical virtues of a film like "Tropic Thunder" is to implicitly liken it to high art, which it is not. It is low comedy, and damn good for what it is. While studio bosses and pompous Hollywood celebrities wince in painful recognition, we mortals can enjoy a delightful bit of summer entertainment, complete with some wry observations nestled amidst all the explosions and fart jokes. Stiller may not have many friends left at the Special Olympics, but his future as a director is looking bright.