I can just see Ben Stiller rolling around naked on a big pile of money shouting, "SCREW YOU, BATMAN! KISS MY ASS, GEORGE LUCAS! YOU CAN BOTH SUCK ON MY 26 MILLION DOLLAR COCK!" Not only did he finally manage to knock Dark Knight off the number one spot (something that Judd Apatow, Will Farrell and those Traveling Pants girls all failed to do) but he also managed to beat out a brand new Star Wars film. Let me state quickly that The Clone Wars was, after a promising opening, strikingly lame so beating it wasn't that much of a challenge. After the tepid Night At The Museum (although that too was a big hit) and the boring Heartbreak Kid, I was wondering if I'd ever see a decent Ben Stiller movie again but Tropic Thunder makes up for both of them. I was not at all encouraged by the fact that Stiller not only had a writing credit but also directed the movie. Stiller's highlights as a director are 1994's Reality Bites (a movie that at the time was said to speak for an entire generation but today hasn't even rated a mention on either edition of VH1's I Love The 90s), Cable Guy (the movie that broke Jim Carrey's streak of hit films) and Zoolander (which has some great parts but also has some boring parts in between those great parts).
Tropic Thunder is about the making of a pretentious war film of the same name. Production is quickly hampered by the incompetence of the director (played by Steve Coogan of Alan Partridge fame and if that means nothing to you then you must live an interesting life instead of watching DVDs of BBC television shows like I do) and the prima donna behavior of its three stars. These stars include Tugg Speedman (Stiller), an action star trying to prove that he can act in a serious project, Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr giving us a second unique and memorable performance this year), a hardcore method actor who underwent medical procedures to darken his skin so he could play an African American and Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black giving us his usual amount of awesome), a drug addicted comedian best known for his film The Farties where he played every member of a flatulent family. Also in the movie is, well, everybody. Everybody includes Nick Nolte playing the Vietnam vet who wrote the book that the movie is based on, Matthew McConaughey as Stiller's devoted agent and an unrecognizable Tom Cruise as an abusive, foul mouthed studio head who, at one point, instructs the movie's key grip to punch Coogan's director character in the face after a particularly bad day of shooting.
One of the reasons that this movie works so well is that it does have a large number of supporting characters and they all have their good and funny moments. For this, I must congratulate Ben Stiller. As writer and director, he could have done what many other movies have done in the past and given all the good lines to himself. In comedies especially, it's not at all uncommon for a star to demand that another character's funny lines be given to him. I'm sure you've all seen comedies like this where only the lead character ever says or does anything funny. Not so with Tropic Thunder. Even a 9 year old boy gets laughs when he plays the head of a gang of Laotian heroin dealers who worship Tugg Speedman for his portrayal of a mentally challenged man in the movie Simple Jack, a film the rest of the world considers to be one of the worst movies ever made.
This is a very funny film and I don't want to ruin too much of it for you. I'm just glad to see that Ben Stiller is making good movies again and hope that this trend continues. Let's see, according to IMDB, he is currently working on...Night At The Museum 2.
AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!
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