Specifically, he’s an acclaimed Australian actor willing to go to any lengths to immerse himself in a role. In this case, that means a complicated surgical procedure to dye his skin so that he can play an African-American. So yes, that does in fact mean that one of the main characters spends most of the movie in blackface. But Downey’s performance is so dead-on as a parody of Hollywood portrayals of African-Americans, that it’s clear the satire is on the industry and not on an entire race of people. It actually seems to me like Downey is doing a fantastic impression of 70’s era Fred Williamson.
By the way, Simple Jack is the basis for a key plot point and actually gets a significant amount of screen time, delighting protestors to no end, I’m sure.
Directed by Stiller and written by Stiller, actor Justin Theroux, and longtime King of the Hill writer Etan Cohen (Who is probably sick and tired of being mistaken for Ethan Coen by now, so give the poor guy a break.), Tropic Thunder tells the story of a star-studded film production. The Vietnam movie is a month behind schedule after only five days of shooting, and the veteran whose story is being dramatized (Nick Nolte, channeling his own natural craziness) convinces the director (Steve Coogan) to take his cast deep into the jungle and shoot the film “guerilla style”.
This excursion takes them into territory controlled by heroin dealers from an unnamed Asian country (Because, you know, why offend anybody?), so you have actors not entirely certain whether or not they’re making a movie vs. real drug-runners. And also, Tom Cruise in a bald wig and enormous amounts of fake body hair. This has been widely reported already, so it’s not any kind of surprise. Still, Cruise gets some solid laughs with his over-the-top anger and florid obscenity. It might be the first time somebody’s laughed non-derisively at Cruise in, oh, five years or so.
It’s a ludicrous plot that requires considerable suspension of disbelief (Wouldn’t an action movie shot on hidden cameras placed at strategic locations around a jungle look like crap? And what about the sound? Are they miked? They don’t appear to be miked.), but the satire is excellent and the characters are inherently funny.
Before the movie proper begins, we see an ad and a series of trailers introducing the characters. Rapper-actor Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson – and by the way, “Alpa Chino” just displaced “Onyx Blackman” as my favorite character name ever) hawks the energy drink “Booty Sweat” with an over-the-top rap and ass-centric ad. The preview for Scorcher VI, starring Tugg Speedman re-introduces the man who had to save “a world that had stopped turning” five times before, and is now called upon to do so again. Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) plays multiple roles in his fart-centric trailer The Fatties: Fart 2, and somewhere Eddie Murphy dies a little inside. Finally, there’s a trailer for Kirk Lazarus’ drama about gay priests, Satan’s Alley, which is just about perfect. (My favorite joke in the movie: “Starring five-time Academy Award winner Kirk Lazarus and MTV Movie Award Best Kiss winner Tobey Maguire.”)
The performances are uniformly funny, from Jack Black going through heroin withdrawal in the jungle to Danny McBride, God among men, as an obsessive special effects engineer. When Stiller’s on, he’s hilarious, and here, he’s definitely on. Vain yet damaged, his Tugg Speedman is in over his head acting in a war movie with a legend like Kirk Lazarus (Everybody in this movie has an awesome name, come to think of it.), but his status as an action hero is swiftly fading. The poor guy is desperate to save his career, but he’s just enough of a butthole that you don’t actually root for him. Sort of like Tom Cruise, come to think of it.
Still, I can’t say enough about Robert Downey, Jr. His performance (as “a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude”) walks a very delicate line. It could have been a horrible minstrel-show kind of trainwreck, but he goes just far enough to keep it legitimately funny rather than reveling in tastelessness. He keeps it South Park, rather than going all Family Guy.
The violence, both real (within the context of the movie) and fake (again…), is kind of horrifying. People who thought Pineapple Express was too far over the top will not be pleased at the opening scene showing the movie-within-the-movie, wherein Jay Baruchel’s small intestine unravels into a bloody mess. It’s not easy to look at, but it’s just insane enough to be plausible. Actually, watching the movie within the movie, I felt like I had a pretty good idea of what Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Inglorious Bastards is going to look like.
Despite some logical flaws and some lack of clarity as to who believes it’s still a movie and when, Tropic Thunder is really, really funny. It’s savage and tasteless and clever and sometimes ridiculously goofy. And it’s got a little thing I like to call the McBride Factor.
Four Beans
