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By Eli Green
August 25, 2008 - 19:00
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With the production of his first major motion picture falling months behind schedule, director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) is on his last leg with his financier, multi-billionaire Les Grossman (Tom Cruise). Pressured into saving his floundering production, and getting his actors to work together any way he can, he takes the advice of war hero John “Four Leaf” Tayback (Nick Nolte), author of the wartime memoir his film is based on, and sends his actors into the middle of the jungle with no more than a scene guide and their blank-loaded weapons, to be filmed from hidden cameras throughout the jungle. What Cockburn doesn't realize is that his actors are about to be in real danger, as they are thrust into a conflict zone, to fend for their lives and find out who they truly are.
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| Four Leaf tells Cockburn his plan. |
Last night, I had the option of seeing one of three films – Tropic Thunder, Pineapple Express or Hamlet 2 . I'm glad I decided to go with Tropic Thunder , not because the other two choices were bad, I wouldn't know, but because it considerably exceeded my expectations. I went in expecting to see a comedy movie about a group of idiot actors who got kidnapped while shooting a film in the jungle. What I got instead, was a story about four actors, each with their own unique personalities, backstories and insecurities, finding and accepting their true selves.
I don't know what it is about Ben Stiller that makes him such a good actor or director, but whatever it is that he is doing, he should keep it up. It's true that some of the characters he plays feel like slight rehashes of those from his previous films – Tugg Speedman seems to have a little bit of a mix of Derek Zoolander and White Goodman. It's not that Speedman's stupid, he just refuses to accept the reality of what's going on around him, and Stiller pulls off that attitude really well, mixing in a dash of stupidity during certain scenes to push the laughs a little further.
Downey Jr.'s Kirk Lazarus is an actor who gets far too invested in becoming his characters, so much so that for his role in Tropic Thunder, Lazarus undergoes a pigment change operation to make himself black and refuses to drop the persona, even off camera. I have not seen many Downey Jr. movies, or Ally McBeal, but from the last two movies he starred in which I actually did see, Tropic Thunder and Iron Man, his skill for characters is nothing short of awe inspiring. It's not just that he's a good comedy actor or how he portrays a classic stereotype of a black guy from the 60s, but that he manages to play almost five different characters in this movie, while still linking them to Lazarus.
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| From left: Baruchel, Jackson, Stiller, Downey Jr. and Black |
Jack Black also has a stellar performance in this film, as mega comedy star Jeff Portnoy. Portnoy's The Fatties comedy franchise is a blatant jab at Eddie Murphy's multiple character roles in The Nutty Professor franchise, but the story actually makes good use of it, taking it from more than a spoof and transforming it into part of the character's background and linking it to his life of excess and substance abuse.
Brandon T. Jackson makes his role as rapper and product whore Alpa Chino look like it was a custom tailored suit. It fits, and it fits stunningly. Finally, rounding out the main cast, Canadian actor Jay Baruchel's performances as cast member Kevin Sandusky made me do a double take. Having grown up watching Baruchel on televisions shows like Popular Mechanics for Kids , Are You Afraid of the Dark and Undeclared , and more recently in films like Knocked Up , I was thoroughly surprised by his performance in Tropic Thunder . I didn't even recognize that it was him until well into the film and I can only attribute that to his skill as an actor or my poor eyesight, and my eyes aren't that bad.
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| Canadian Jay Baruchel as cast member Kevin Sandusky |
Tropic Thunder is a great comedy movie. It's certainly not for kids, thanks to the level of violence, excess of expletives, especially from Tom Cruise, drug references and sexuality, but if you're at the right age and you're looking for a good laugh, good story packed with morals, character growth and explosions, Tropic Thunder will fit the bill perfectly.
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