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TROPIC THUNDER Send This Review to a Friend
Overkill satire permeates this lavish comedy spoofing Hollywood’s making of war movies but committing the very excesses being ridiculed. There are laughs to be sure from some of the grossness, but ultimately “Tropic Thunder,” directed by Ben Stiller, who also stars, and written by him, Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, becomes wearing. Good taste is not the issue here. Complaints about making jokes about retards are silly. There are enough insults for everyone—after all, it is comedy. The real problem is the substitution of noise and over-the-top action for wit, and when smart ideas give way to heavy-handedness, the result can be fatiguing.
The plot involves Hollywood’s efforts to make a film about the Vietnam War with all of the blood and guts the war entails and Stiller as Tugg Speedman, an actor in search of a hit. Much of the early part is outrageously funny, given the character assortment and the action scenes. But the film gets mired in its own quagmire when the actors encounter jungle drug dealers and have to battle it out for survival—a war within a war. Did I mention overkill?
There’s somewhat of a surprise at the end when we find that crass producer Les Grossman is played by Tom Cruise, who is virtually unrecognizable until then. (Sorry, now you know what to look for.) Others in the large cast of “Tropic Thunder” include Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Steve Coogan, Nick Nolte, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Brandon T. Jackson and Bill Hader.
This is a huge production with a powerhouse of action effects and a deafening soundtrack. All of that can be bought with money. What is more elusive is cleverness, and while “Tropic Thunder” has some of that ingredient to tickle the funnybone, it could use a lot more. A DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures release.
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