Movie Review: Tropic Thunder

Tropic Thunder has real life actors pretending to be actors pretending to be soldiers in a movie based on a book who wind up having to become soldiers in a modern day hostage situation.  I can't explain it any clearer than that... but I can review it if that helps.



I had been looking forward to this movie for a while since the story sounded like it could be funny, and it was being directed by Ben Stiller, who I think is a pretty funny guy.  Parallels could be drawn between this movie lampooning actors and Stiller's previous directorial work, Zoolander, lampooning modeling.  I would say that Zoolander is much better than this movie in that it is much more memorable, whereas Tropic Thunder is an hour and forty minutes of cheap laughs.

I'm not going to lie, I felt myself getting stupider as I watched this movie.  It's chuck full of lowbrow comedy which uses f-bombs to get out of actually having to write lines for the characters.  Don't get me wrong, I swear constantly and laughed at pretty much every time they did on screen (which means I was laughing for most of the movie), but when I can walk away from a comedy and can't think of a single piece of funny dialogue worth remembering, that's sad.  There are many lines I remember from Zoolander, because Zoolander didn't take the easy way out and actually had some thought put into it.

The movie starts out immediately with fake trailers starring the characters from the movie to show you what kind of actors they are.  Brandon T. Jackson's character, Alpa Chino, is known for selling branded merchandise, Ben Stiller's for crappy action movies, Jack Black's for fart comedies, and Robert Downey Jr.'s for sappy drama movies.  It makes it clear from the fake trailers that the characters are terrible actors that shouldn't be anywhere near a Vietnam movie, which is exactly why the movie they're working on goes to hell.

While they're on set in Vietnam, shit hits the fan and the main cast is left stranded in the jungles of Vietnam.  Being morons, however, they do not completely realize that they are in real danger, which is how their adventure begins.  One of them winds up being captured by a gang of Vietnamese drug runners, and it is up to the rest of actors to save him.  That's pretty much all you need to know about the story.

Out of all the characters the only one that is interesting in the slightest is Robert Downey Jr.'s character, Kirk Lazarus.  Lazarus is known for getting really deep into his roles and goes as far as to get skin pigmentation surgery to make himself look black for his role in the movie.  Even when his character realizes that they're in real danger, he is still unable to break character.  This is noticed by Stiller's character, Tugg Speedman, who asks him if he thinks they no longer filming why is he still in character.

I was rather surprised to see Matthew McConaughey and Tom Cruise in the movie as Speedman's agent, Rick Peck, and the fictional movie's executive producer, Les Grossman, respectively.  McConaughey's character is pretty funny, and actually has a few genuinely funny lines.  Cruise on the other hand couldn't suck more in this movie if he had all the Hoover vacuums and hookers in the world on his side.  If any part of this movie deserves to be taken out, it's definitely when Cruise is dancing around in his fat suit.

There are several parts of the movie that are a tip of the hat to other movies, wether intentional or not.  Of course there are the scenes that are reminicient of Apocalypse Now such as when Lazarus finds Speedman in the Vietnamese camp, or when Speedman is attacked by a panda in the jungle.  Also, the way they rig a bridge to explode reminded me of The Bridge on the River Kwai or perhaps The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and when Jack Black's character comes across a mound of heroin, it is in the shape of Devil's Tower in Wyoming, featured in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

One big thing that this movie has going for it is the special effects.  The explosions look amazing, to the point where I wish they would make an actual war movie shot the same way.

As much as I have to say bad about this movie I would still reccomend people see it.  Sure, it's brainless, but that doesn't mean it isn't funny.  It's nice to be able to just turn off your mind and laugh for a change instead of having to follow the plot intently.