At once an absurdist retooling of Apocalype Now, a corsucating tirade against Hollywood egotism and a showcase for tasteless humour, Tropic Thunder succeeds with no little flair as the smartest and dumbest film of the season.
A meta-movie comprised of a series of meta-jokes, Tropic Thunder begins with a pompous cast filming a Vietnam war epic in the jungle. For Ben Stiller’s Tugg Speedman, it’s a make or break movie; a dunderheaded action star, his attempts to curry Oscar favour with the hilariously patronising special-needs weepie Simple Jack have rightly floundered.
Best of all is Robert Downey Jr., whose performance as an Australian method actor playing a black soldier is nothing less than a wicked awesome work of genius. To safeguard proceedings from professionally offended special interest groups, Jay Baruchel’s secretly gay rapper provides a merciless African-American commentary on RDJ’s antics.
The characters alone might have been sufficient entertainment, but when the director of this bloated war movie (Steve Coogan) steps on a landmine, evil studio boss Tom Cruise (putting in his best work since Magnolia) decides to let them fend for themselves in the jungle.
What a pity that a coalition of disability-advocate bodies have chosen to protest a film that is so clearly on their side. The exchange between the mighty RDJ and Mr. Stiller on ‘retard acting’, a barbed deconstruction of actors who are looking to ‘do a Rain Man’, is one of the funniest in all cinema.