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With intimidated director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) at the helm, the big-budget production of Tropic Thunder, based on the Vietnam War memoir of the same name by “Four-Leaf” Tayback (Nick Nolte, grizzled as ever), is only five days into shooting and already a month behind schedule. Following two explosions – one, a costly pyrotechnic marvel that the cameras manage to miss; the other, a violently profane tantrum from studio head Les Grossman (a disguised Tom Cruise) – a drunken and desperate Cockburn takes to heart Tayback’s suggestion that he dump his cast of prima donnas, including has-been action star Tugg Speedman (Stiller), drug-addled comedian Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), and award-winning Method man Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), into the jungle in the name of dramatic effect and, inadvertently, into the territory of real-life heroin dealers in the name of misguided intentions.

Stiller’s Speedman has left his fans cold with an exhausted action franchise and an ill-advised attempt at Oscar glory as Simple Jack, although his agent (Matthew McConaughey) dotes on him regardless. Black’s Portnoy wants to offer the world something more than fat suits and fart jokes, though if the world offers him heroin in return, he minds a little less. Downey Jr.’s Lazarus is so dedicated to his craft that he’s opted to have his skin dyed in an effort to resemble his African-American character, much to the chagrin of an actually African-American co-star (Brandon T. Jackson). Cruise’s Grossman makes the most of crude gestures and worse language, while the film manages to make the least of Bill Hader as his sycophantic underling. Apatow alums Jay Baruchel and Danny McBride fare a bit better as a fledgling actor and a trigger-happy pyrotechnician, respectively, who appear to have been alone in actually having read the script or the book it was based on.

Whereas last week’s action-comedy, Pineapple Express, offered up a wish-fulfillment scenario of sorts where the protagonists were offered a seemingly endless supply of ammo with which to fire back on their foes with the perpetual threat of very real harm, the characters of Tropic Thunder are so disillusioned as to their shooting blanks that they inadvertently dodge almost every bullet that they think isn’t really being fired their way. Lazarus is the first to sense that real danger is abound, but even then, he refuses to drop his jive-talkin’ persona before the DVD commentary is recorded, a matter that leads to the best ‘dude’-off this side of Baseketball and a terrifically perceptive monologue about the nature of moderation when it comes to awards bids such as Speedman's. In an overall regard, though, it's satire that proves as comical as possible without actually doing any pointed harm to the targets in its sights.

The actors-facing-mistaken-identity conceit may not be a new one – ranging from before 'Three Amigos' to after 'Galaxy Quest' – but Stiller and friends manage to spike it with enough raunch and relevance to get by. The end result is relentlessly clever, reliably funny, and realistically excessive (it's shot, cut, and treated all-around like the equal of the very Hollywood bombast that it sends up), and there's a small comfort to be taken with any comedy that turns out to be more like 'The Ben Stiller Show' and not just a Ben Stiller show.

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originally posted: 08/15/08 10:37:22
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