No one in Hollywood seems to be suffering more at the hands of the Apatow factory than Ben Stiller. The likes of Will Ferrell, Steve Carell and Seth Rogen have reinvented the comedy industry, a fact that Stiller was rudely awakened to in 2007 when his “The Heartbreak Kid” remake flopped. In order to return to his winning ways, Stiller is doing something that he hasn’t done since 2001’s “Zoolander”: directing his own movie.
“Tropic Thunder,” Stiller’s return to the director’s chair, is the story of three major film stars and the Vietnam War movie that they set out to make. The trinity of actors is headlined by Tugg Speedman (Stiller), an action movie star whose career is quickly spiraling downward. Joining him are Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), a comedian who makes Adam Sandler look like Socrates, and Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), a five-time Oscar winner fresh off a controversial procedure designed to darken the pigment of his skin so that he can play the squad’s African-American lieutenant.
The combination of the trio’s prima donna character traits, the film’s absurdly large budget, and the inept helming of first-time director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan), leads people close to the film’s production to call it a disaster after only five days of filming. Fearing for the quality of the film version of his story, author of the fact-based source material “Four Leaf” Tayback (Nick Nolte), urges Cockburn to fly his stars to a dangerous part of the jungle. Unfortunately for them, the danger turns out to be real, as the director and his stars find themselves unwittingly encroaching on the territory of some particularly violent drug manufacturers, eventually creating a war of their own.
As “Tropic Thunder” is at least in some ways a movie about movies, the references to silly war movie clichés and direct allusions to classics of the genre seem almost innumerable, ranging from “Apocalypse Now” to “Platoon.” Also near uncountable is the number of celebrity cameos, a dangerous play for any movie that takes itself even a little bit seriously. Thankfully, “Tropic Thunder” does not.
Much like “Pineapple Express,” “Tropic Thunder” is a comedy that doesn’t pull punches on the action front. In fact, a tremendous amount of the film’s enjoyment depends on the viewer’s ability to find excessive gore funny and ironic. In the theme of its blood-spurting jests, the movie is at its best when it is at its most tasteless.
A subplot involving Speedman’s last performance, a mentally retarded man in the feature “Simple Jack,” pulls some of the movie’s biggest laughs, as well as a slew of criticism from representatives of the disabled community. The same can be said for Downey Jr.’s portrayal of a late ’60s African American: It has already offended some, it’s sure to offend more, and it will cause more still to become delirious with laughter.
However, as fun as the film can be for parts of its runtime, it experiences major setbacks whenever it nears anything conventional. The film suffers from a surprising lack of quotable material, which is a make-or-break deal for a summer comedy. And while the action can occasionally be humorous, it mostly serves as another reminder of what makes the comedic value of Edgar Wright’s action scenes so special: Making people laugh at explosions and gunfire for more than a few minutes is really hard to do. “Tropic Thunder” is a pleasant enough diversion, and not a bad way to pass a couple of hours, but it’s nothing that you will remember in a month’s time, and not nearly enough to launch Stiller back to comedy superstardom. Chances are he still has it in him; this just isn’t it.