Release Date: August 13, 2008
Rating: R (for pervasive language, including sexual references, violent content and drug material)
Genre: Comedy
Run Time: 107 min.
Director: Ben Stiller
Actors: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Jay Baruchel, Brandon T. Jackson, Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan, Danny McBride, Matthew McConaughey, Brandon Soo Hoo
Tropic Thunder, a new comedy from director and star Ben Stiller, is profane, crude and politically incorrect. It’s also uproariously funny—the year’s best comedy—and has a winning performance from Robert Downey Jr.
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Will Christians enjoy it? The movie is full of foul language and uses the Lord’s name irreverently. But its target is not God, or Christians. Instead, Tropic Thunder targets Hollywood pomposity, pampered actors and over-the-top movie clichés, scoring several direct hits. Because those are all things that culturally conservative Christians find laughable, many will laugh along—some guiltily, some content that laughter is good for the soul. Others will find the movie’s excesses needlessly offensive.
The film tricks viewers with a pre-credits opening consisting of one ad and a few movie previews, all featuring the actors we’ll soon meet in Tropic Thunder. Loud and obnoxious, the advertisement is a music-video style product endorsement set to extremely explicit lyrics by rapper/actor Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson). For viewers unaware that the ad is actually part of Tropic Thunder, it’s a bit of a shock to the system.
Three faux movie previews quickly allow viewers to get in on the joke. The first is for the latest film from action movie star Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), star of a never-ending series of films about a brute named Scorcher. Also previewed: A multi-character comedy powered by the flatulence of star Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) and a homosexual drama set in the Middle Ages and starring Australian hunk Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.)—a mixture of Priest and The Da Vinci Code, with longing gazes and forbidden touches.
The feature proper begins as the story of an adaptation gone bad. A film crew adapting a story by wounded war veteran Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte) is beset with problems. The director (Steve Coogan) has no control over his actors, who include Speedman, Lazarus, Chino, Portnoy and Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel).
When a technician (Danny McBride) arranges an elaborate explosion that the cameras fail to capture, the wasted costs bring down the wrath of movie executive Les Grossman (a terrific performance from a surprising actor, the name of whom the studio is trying—and failing—to keep quiet). He’s a profane, overbearing tycoon whose bottom-line concerns trump everything else, including the well-being of his Speedman’s agent (Matthew McConaughey).