Tropic Thunder

I had thought Tropic Thunder looked interesting when it was in theaters, but I never got around to going to see it.  When the DVD came out, they did the now common practice of releasing a single disc and a two disc version.  Target went so far as to include an exclusive Tropic Thunder patch with their two disc version.  I wanted to see the movie, but I wanted to get the 2 disc version, and it wasn’t on sale.  I didn’t want the movie bad enough to pay full price, and if I was going to pay full price, then it was going to be the Target exclusive with the patch because I would at least get something extra for my money even if it wasn’t something I had any real particular interest in having.  Can you follow the twisted logic in that?  I came very close to picking it up one time while on vacation, but I ended up buying something else (the Target exclusive version of the 2 disc Star Wars Clone Wars movie, I believe).

When Tropic Thunder hit pay cable, I managed to catch a little of it.  It was the scene where Les Grossman (Tom Cruise) is trying to convince agent Rick Peck (Matthew McConaughey) that they can make more money by just letting the Asian drug lords that have captured Tug Speedman (Ben Stiller) kill him and collect the insurance than by saving him and finishing the over budget film they were making.  Watching Cruise in his Grossman makeup dance around to Flo Rida’s song Low while offering McConaughey a G4 airplane if he’ll just play ball was pretty funny and actually made me want to see the film even more.  Last week I finally found a used copy of the two disc version with the cardboard slipcover at KV Fine Jewelry & Loan in St. Albans.  I grabbed it up in a heartbeat.

The DVD features the Unrated Director’s Cut of the film which runs slightly over two hours.  Normally on Tuesday, I try to find a short film because I’m trying to get done early enough to catch Lost.  This week I managed to start my movie early enough that I would be done before Lost came on, even with the longer running time.  The movie starts with an ad for Booty Juice, a fictional product one of the stars of Tropic Thunder is pitching.  This is followed by trailers for Scorcher VI (a post apocalyptic action hero franchise that has seen better days), The Fatties Fart 2 (a comedy about a family of overweight goofballs all played by the same actor constantly farting), and one whose title escapes me (Satan’s Alley perhaps) about a forbidden love between two holy men at a monastery (or maybe an abbey).  From there we are taken right into the heart of the Viet Nam war.  Men are being shot, helicopters are spraying bullets and dropping bombs, and, as we quickly learn, it’s all fake.  A group of actors are filming a Viet Nam war film based on a book by one of the only surviving veterans of that particular skirmish, Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte).  Tayback convinces the directer (Steve Coogan) to take the lead actors out to this spot he knows, drop them off and then make them learn to work as a team as they complete their “mission”.  Unfortunately, Tayback is a liar that created his hero story and was never in Nam.  The spot he has chosen is in the heart of a drug lord’s heroin operation, and it also still has active mines, one of which the director steps on as he briefs his actors on their mission.  When the director explodes, the actors assume that it’s a gag designed to heighten their sense of reality, so they start the mission the director assigned them, still thinking everything around them is all part of the movie.

The acting in Tropic Thunder is spot on.  Robert Downey Jr. plays an Australian method actor playing a black man.  Jack Black is the comic star of the Fatties movies making a serious film and trying to deal with his massive drug problem.  And Stiller, Nolte, McConaughey and especially Cruise, nail their characters perfectly.  The rest of the cast is great as well from Danny McBride as pyro effects man Cody to Brandon T. Jackson as Booty Sweat hawking rapper/actor Alpa Chino. 

Tropic Thunder is also a very well written film.  It is a satire with some very funny scenes and insightful gags.  Stiller’s character’s desire to adopt a child from overseas which backfires on him with hilarious results.  The concept of a white man undergoing surgery and makeup to play a black man and then trying so hard to live his life the way he thinks a black man would to get in character.  And then there’s the Simple Jack subplot.  Simple Jack was a role that Stiller’s character played in a fictional movie about a mentally challenged young man.  It is a role he obviously took with the hope of winning an Oscar, which he didn’t.  The conversation between Stiller and Downey’s characters over how Stiller screwed up by going “full-blown retard” is extremely funny and very sharp.  The problem with something like this is that some people don’t see the satire, they only hear the words, and they get their panties in a bunch.  Naturally that happened to Tropic Thunder and so the DVD also contains a public service spot extolling the fact that mentally challenged people are just like everyone else and should be called friend, co-worker, inspiration, but never retard.  Okay Dreamworks, where was the PSA telling people not to call overweight people fatties?  Oh that’s right, it’s okay to poke fun at the fat people.  We’re all jolly, happy folk.  Or maybe you understood that we’re smart enough to understand comedy.

The DVD is loaded with bonus features.  There are some great featurettes on the making of the film, an alternate ending is included, and there is commentary available.  This is a very well done DVD.  The movie is also very well done, and gets 3 1/4 stars.

Tags: Ben Stiller, cameos, comedy, controversy, DVD, Jack Black, mentally challenged, Nick Nolte, Oscar, PSA, Robert Downey Jr, Target, Tom Cruise, Viet Nam, war