Tropic Thunder
Crosses the line into bad taste, but then it keeps running and running, until it rolls over into awesomeness again. The anti-Lebowski.
It’s actually a very conservative film, with the rigid adherence to the three arc structure, an happy ending, and each character grows and overcomes their character flaw. It’s about ‘Nam, not consciousness objectors. There are stakes, instead of guy throwing a ringer for a ringer. It’s self-referential and about Hollywood, instead of those subtle references to Kraftwerk and the Port Huron statement. The bossman is not a complete fraud.
The plot is the weakest part: they crew is filming a Platoon / Apocalypse Now retreat, based on a book. The big stars are freaking prima donnas, the Sam Mendes dude they hired can’t handle it, a goddamn mess. The studio is breathing down their necks, so the director goes wild and starts filming The Blair Witch Project in the jungle. He steps on a real mine and blows up, so they have to continue by themselves. The final POW “set” is some drug production lab which they storm, successfully. As they are exfiltrated in a Huey, they are saved from an RPG by a TiVo box, courtesy of the star’s agent.
The cast is masterfully chosen and does their job admirably. Jay Baruchel is the nerdy guy who puts in the work, goes to bootcamp for a couple months, reads the book, reads the script, reads the in-flight magazine, he’s a bonafide dude just doing his job. He just wants to meet Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Jack Black is at his best playing a “comedian” with a fart franchise (a jab at Eddie Murphy) who needs his smack real bad, I mean, jellybeans. He quits cold turkey and resists the temptation again and again, the shame and humiliation take over.
Brandon T Jackson is Alpa Chino, the millionaire rapper trying to get into acting. He is just a Black stereotype pre-Moonlight, so he’s got less to do. Since he’s gay, his outfit on the last raid is fabulous and he stitches very well. He loooves the pussy, and pimps out his Booty Sweat all the time!
Nepo baby Robert Downey Jr is pretending to be Daniel Day Lewis, just about the only blackface role in decades. It’s a gamble, but it works, I guess. It should have been someone more known for arthouse stuff, but he was probably the only one that said yes. He wants to ditch the blackface and be himself, but I guess his real arc is giving the Oscar to his friend while admitting he’s not the centre of attention.
Finally, Ben Stiller, the hero, both Kurtz, and William Dafoe in Platoon, does his thing but less so, since he’s directing too. It’s a good thing too. He’s Robert Downey Jr. foil, the upstart action guy who wants to be taken seriously. A bit like Dave Batista.
A very side character that steal the show is Tom Cruise, with a large fat suit, dancing with a massive gilded dollar sign hanging from his neck. Big Dick Player! “take a big step back and literally FUCK YOUR OWN FACE”! He hits them all out of the park, it’s almost scary.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.