Tropic Thunder (2008) Director - Ben Stiller; Starring - Ben Stiller, Roberty Downey, Jr, Jack Black, Brandon T. Jackson, Jay Baruchel, Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan, Danny McBride, Brandon Soo Hoo, Tom Cruise; Screenplay - Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux & Etan Coen from a story by Stiller and Theroux; Rated R for violence, language, drug use references and sexual references; see trailer here.

The thing to remember at all times: it is just a movie.

My friends have to remind me of that from time to time.  Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was awful, yes.  But it was not the end of the world.  George Lucas did not destroy my childhood by going to the well after it was already dry with Indy and the Star Wars prequels.  He just made bad choices.  They were just movies.

In Tropic Thunder, action film superstar Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), comic actor Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) and Australian award winning thespian Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.) find themselves working on a Vietnam War film.  The film itself is troubled from the beginning because each performer is working towards their own particular agenda.

Speedman desperately wants a role to establish himself as a serious actor.  Having already made a huge name for himself as an action-movie legend, Speedman's reputation is in need of a serious overhaul.  This is because his previous film Simple Jack, which was intended to get Speedman Oscar recognition, only succeeded in tearing down Speedman's drawing power with his horrifically offensive depiction of a character with developmental deficiencies.

Portnoy is also attempting to break out of stereotyping in his roles.  Having made a couple of hugely commercial comedies in which he plays multiple characters in the same film, Portnoy seems convinced he can do any genre.  He is not as driven as Speedman to change his image, and in fact relishes how he is perceived off camera as a clown.

Lazarus is the one "true" actor working on the project.  Having won five Oscars through his unconventional style of method acting, Lazarus has broached new and controversial ground for this new role, undergoing a "pigment augmentation" operation to be able to play an African-American soldier in the platoon.  Lazarus loses himself so deeply in the character, the portrayal does not end when the cameras stop rolling.

This movie unashamedly goes after every Hollywood filmmaking convention it can, even before the movie itself starts.  Prior to the film, there are fake trailers for Speedman's last action opus Scorcher VI, Portnoy's The Fatties 2, and Lazarus' arthouse drama Satan's Alley.  The take no prisoners approach in mocking the Hollywood style is indicative of what Stiller and company are doing with the entire film.  It is satire through and through, and good satire always runs the risk of offending people.

This is why the protests that have been marshaled around the film's release are more than a bit disheartening.  The ARC of the United States, an organization and advocacy group for people with developmental disabilities has focused on Tropic Thunder's use of the word "retard", complaining that the film holds up those with such disabilities for ridicule.  They have advocated boycotting the film and demanded apologies from Stiller and Dreamworks Studios.

The complaint completely dismisses the context in which the word is used and the point made about Hollywood's perspective in regards to Simple Jack.  In a long exchange between Lazarus and Speedman talking about the issues with Simple Jack, Lazarus chastises Speedman for "going full blown retard", and not understanding that the Academy never recognizes or rewards actors for portraying people with full developmental disabilities.

The argument is a tongue-in-cheek exchange that mimics more serious discussions that get brought up whenever an attractive actress "uglies" up to be taken seriously in a role (see Charlize Theron in Monster or Nicole Kidman's prosthetic nose to play Virginia Woolfe in The Hours).  The target of ridicule is not people who are developmentally disabled, but the Hollywood mindset that considers "dumbing down" a more challenging role for an actor to take.  Instead, ARC takes the low road and focuses primarily on use of what one press released dubbed "the ‘R' word" as a source of complaint.  Never mind the fact that ARC itself stood for "Association of Retarded Citizens" until 1992.

In fact, that concept of changing appearances for the sake of recognition hits on the central theme of Tropic Thunder: fronting.  Every character is sporting some kind of façade that is meant to either advance their agenda in some way or hide a secret they would rather not have out in the open.  Every façade lends itself to the character development as the movie plays out, and it is interesting in how an overt façade is paralleled with a subtler one.

Downey, Jr's Lazarus sports the obvious artificial façade, the pigment augmentation to allow him to play being a black man.  It becomes a bone of contention between Lazarus and rapper-turned-actor Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), who is black but whose rapper persona turns out to be a front for commercial purposes (including selling an energy drink called "Booty Sweat", a commecial for which runs with the fake trailers).  Later, when the group engages in the obligatory war movie "Who's waiting for you back home?" scene, a second layer of his façade sneaks out and lends itself to a brilliant cameo at the end of the movie.

Black's Portnoy hides a secret that is pretty obvious once the group starts traipsing through the jungle.  While not necessarily detrimental to his character's career, it is something that he would just as soon keep under wraps.  It is a more subtle parallel to Nolte's "Four Leaf" Tayback, who wrote the novel that Cockburn's film is based off of.  Tayback is an inspiration to Danny McBride's Cody, the special effects coordinator for the movie.  When Tayback's secret is laid bare, Cody finds his illusions shattered, but both ultimately get a chance to redeem themselves doing things they had only been pretending at previously.  The screenplay is structured to always keep you guessing at everyone's masks, keeping you thinking as much as it is keeping you laughing.

Downey, Jr. is at the top of his game as Lazarus.  There are allusions to Lazarus' off-screen issues with brawling with the media that make no bones about who Downey, Jr. has modeled his character after, but it his performance "in character" for the in-film movie that blew me away. 

Downey also builds some nice chemistry with Jackson's Chino.  Together, the two attack and ridicule a fair bit of the stereotypes that inform how Hollywood depicts minorities every bit as savagely as the "retard" discussion between Speedman and Lazarus does.  The back and forth between Chino and Lazarus plays out hysterically, and it may well wind up garnering an Oscar nom for Downey, Jr if there is any justice in this world.  The thought actually struck me afterwards that this movie could lead to the toughest Oscar choice I can imagine in some time: Downey, Jr. or Heath Ledger for Best Supporting Actor of 2008.

Jack Black's Portnoy has limited screen time, but makes the most of it.  The early slapstick humor involving bodily functions gives way to more serious problems that Portnoy has to cope with when he is not filming.  It sets up for some funny if obvious motivations for Portnoy in the last third of the film, but works out well in the end.

Stiller's Tugg Speedman is not much of a deviation from Stiller's other work.  He is an actor/director that I have seen spawn some pretty polarized reactions from people who have seen his work.  Just drop the word Zoolander amongst your movie watching crew and watch the reaction.  That said, I think Speedman as a character works better within Stiller's range as an actor.  When Speedman takes the effort to inject more realism into the filming to heart, and he goes full-blown Rambo in the jungle, it leads to one of the funnier gags in the film. 

And when we get to see Speedman as Simple Jack, it works because the performance should make you cringe.  If anything, Stiller is poking fun at that Farrelly Brothers school of lowbrow comedy that uses developmentally challenged people as the punchline to every joke, and highlighting just how ugly that sort of comedy can be.  I would argue that Stiller is maybe also taking shots at the audiences for that kind of humor, but I do not believe Tropic Thunder is trying to be that meta in its approach.

That may be the only level on which Tropic Thunder is not trying to lampoon something, however.  In addition to the areas mentioned above, it also lances the war movie genre (Platoon getting most of the nods) while making fun of the Hollywood process as well.  Tom Cruise has gotten a lot of praise in critical circles for his role as Les Grossman, and while I did not think it was all that, it does make me wonder if Cruise is maybe having some fun at his own expense for one of his signature roles.  Call it Jerry Maguire: the Later Years.

From start to finish, Tropic Thunder lays everything on the line to try and bring the funny.  I think it unquestionably succeeds more often than it fails, as I think no other film has made me laugh this hard since Hot Fuzz last year.  I can not remember where I saw the phrase first, but I recall reading a line somewhere that said, "Sacred cows tend to make the best hamburgers."  In holding nothing sacred, Tropic Thunder may run afoul of offending a few of the more delicate sensibilities, but I think the effort is worth it for the laughs that it does bring.

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