Tropic Thunder Not Your Typical Vietnam Flick
Is the Ben Stiller comedy destined to become a classic — or is it just a gross-out movie?
Tropic Thunder is half showbiz satire, half action movie, half broad comedy, and all Tom Cruise.
You thought this was a Ben Stiller movie?
It is, unfortunately. Stiller directed and plays a vainglorious action movie star (not at all like Cruise) who, after playing a retarded guy in an I Am Sam-like flop, needs a hit. So he goes to the jungles of Vietnam to shoot a war yarn.
His costars include a junkie (Jack Black) whose specialty is making fart-based comedies while wearing fat suits and an Aussie Method actor (Robert Downey Jr.) who has his skin dyed black to play a sergeant and talks in a Redd Foxx rasp, even when the cameras aren’t rolling. The things that are rolling, constantly, are the eyeballs of another black actor, a rapper named Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) who can’t stand the Downey character’s Jolson of the Jungle routine. Meanwhile, the Vietnam vet (Nick Nolte) who wrote the book on which the script was based tells everyone they’re a bunch of wussies who are cocking up everything.
The film they’re shooting on location in southeast Asia, Tropic Thunder, is a disaster.
In an effort to pump some reality into things the Brit director (Steve Coogan) takes the actors deep into the jungle and makes them improvise, promising that hidden cameras will catch their every move. Naturally everyone runs afoul of the well-armed local opium dealers, who mistake the actors for real DEA agents coming to take down their ring.
Stiller, thanks to poor advice from his director, Ben Stiller, spends a lot of time pulling faces and generally acting idiotic, and the laughs are pretty sparse whenever he is on camera – and some of those laughs have famously angered groups representing the disabled.
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Kyle Smith is a film critic for the the New York Post. His website is at www.kylesmithonline.com.
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19 Comments
1. rocketeer:Gack.
Aug 13, 2008 - 6:38 am 2. Review: “Tropic Thunder” | KyleSmithOnline.com:[...] “Tropic Thunder” is pretty funny, except when Ben Stiller is on screen, and the big action-movie finale is staged well enough to get Stiller work as a director of he-man flicks. What makes the film a must see is Tom Cruise’s surprisingly hilarious work in support. My review is here. [...]
Aug 13, 2008 - 8:53 am 3. chris:Your tagline is terrible. Maybe you don’t understand what the word “classic” means?
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:18 am 4. Karl:Scott Rudin… and Sumner Redstone.
Aug 13, 2008 - 11:46 am 5. Cletus:Tom Cruise was good before he went crazy
Aug 13, 2008 - 12:26 pm 6. jvon:This looks completely idiotic. I will have to go see it.
Aug 13, 2008 - 9:06 pm 7. Jbl:I’m a Downey fan. But I may wait for this to come out on tape.
Aug 13, 2008 - 10:56 pm 8. HardHeadedWoman:I have never understood what anyone could see in Ben Stiller.
Aug 14, 2008 - 7:11 am 9. jay:Tom Cruise is an actor? I thought he was a priest for Scientology.
Aug 14, 2008 - 7:38 am 10. FMC:I’m definitely seeing this…I’ve been waiting forever for a comedy version of Apocalypse Now.
Aug 14, 2008 - 8:34 am 11. SGT Ted:Good thing they didn’t make fun of autism. The pearl clutchers would have shot into space.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:00 am 12. Javelin:I won’t waste ticket price on it, but as soon as it gets to DVD, I’m seeing it! Funny, how everyone who is supposed to be so sensitive about religion feels they must babble about Cruise’s which to my knowledge, has nothing to do with the film? Maybe we should point out the Jews too?
Aug 14, 2008 - 2:10 pm 13. jay:Javelin:
Aug 15, 2008 - 10:28 am 14. KenK:That reply must have been about my post. If Cruise was running around and making videos about the joys of being catholic then that’s what the joke would have been about. Mel Brooks and others have made a career out of “pointing out the Jews” so that’s been done. I didn’t think my stupid joke warranted a reply but I guess you get easily offended.
In case you haven’t heard, this film uses a word equivalent to the n-word – A LOT!
Stiller is stupid if he thinks that “free Speech” covers the filth in this film.
Join the ‘R-word’ Campaign
Special Olympics invites you to join the ‘r-word’ campaign. We are leading an effort to address the harmful impact and negative attitudes associated with the use of the word ‘retard.’ Help make a change by taking the r-word pledge at
http://www.r-word.org
And check this out too:
Aug 15, 2008 - 9:33 pm 15. audie2:Soeren Palumbo is a senior honors student at Fremd High School in Wheeling, Illinois, and big brother to Olivia. During Writer’s Week (in March 2007), he gave the following speech to a gymnasium full of his high school peers and faculty and received a standing ovation. View a YouTube video of the speech.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoqaNG0Ozqc
Just saw this movie. And it is hilarious. The language is part of the “satire” and it is also funny. Stiller was fine, Cruise was great and Downey was awsome. The action sequences were as well played out as any Rambo flick.
Aug 16, 2008 - 1:26 am 16. bdog57:So, making fun of a man’s religion is “OK”, but making fun of the mentally challenged and racial tensions is not? I love all of the hypocrisy and nanny-ism surrounding the critics of this film.
People just REALLY aren’t getting the joke with the “Simple Jack” routine. It works on so many levels because it is an indictment of how Hollywood profits by exploiting those with challenges. I have a son with Autism and one with Asperger’s -not the same as retardation, I know, but still – and I laughed hysterically. The fact that the foreign audience idolizes “Simple Jack” is even better: MANY once-popular U.S. bands and entertainment acts are still quite successful overseas long after they’re considered yesterday’s news stateside.
The whole point of satire is to make fun of people/groups who take themselves too seriously. The “trailers” at the front of this movie should clue you in: over-the-top cartoons of oversexed rappers, overhyped action heroes, and gratuitous swipes at Eddie Murphy and Brokeback Mountain.
The end credits said “no animals were harmed in the making of this movie” but I’m pretty sure that quite a few sacred cows were slaughtered.
Aug 16, 2008 - 10:19 am 17. New York City:I saw this movie yesterday and thought it was really funny. It’s worth seeing.
Aug 17, 2008 - 1:06 pm 18. Orbiting the bologsphere | Daily Newscaster:[...] Tropic Thunder not your typical Vietnam flick say pajamas media. [...]
Aug 17, 2008 - 4:47 pm 19. movie junkie:Robert Downey Jr. cracks me up… he’s got a knack for not taking himself too seriously
Aug 26, 2008 - 3:40 pm