Tropic Thunder

Tropic Thunder (C+) A sort-of-clever, if not memorable piss-take by Ben Stiller on war movies and Hollywood. You know, there are probably primitive tribesmen in New Guinea who know that movie stars are insecure, that movie directors are pompous, and that movie producers are pricks. Which makes the satire in this film come across as kind of half-hearted. And half-way over the top is nowhere near over the top for a movie like this. So the only real pleasure you're going to get out of this film is in Tom Cruise's cameo as a fat, balding, sausage-fingered, foul-mouthed producer. The odd thing is, though, is that it's probably Cruise's best acting in, well, forever. The last time I saw Cruise trying to stretch himself as an actor (I haven't seen Magnolia.) was in Michael Mann's Collateral, and he didn't do too good a job then. You needed to see a blandly handsome man rotting from within in that role, and Cruise couldn't pull it off. (Maybe Pierce Brosnan or Russel Crowe, perhaps?) He was too fresh-faced and energetic to make me believe he was a world-weary hit man, and the dye-job he did on his hair just seemed like a bad dye-job.

The strange thing in this movie is that he's buried under a bald cap, fake nose and stubby fingers, and I've never seen him take off in a part like he does here. He's a close relative of one of Mike Myers' grotesque 'Austin Powers' characters, like Fat Bastard or Goldmember. I've got a sneaking suspicion that while Cruise the Scientologist is determined to show a sane, stable, and happy human to the rest of the world, it's a role like this that gives us Tom Cruise, actual person, warts and all. (His performance is like watching Cruise's actual persona squirt out like meat through a grinder...)

As for the rest of the film, eh... The rest of the characters are so one-dimensional, any satire that Stiller intended falls flat on its face. They're just the set up for a collection of one-liners. Case in point: Matthew McConaughey plays Stiller's agent, and in a climactic scene, Cruise's slimy producer tries to convince him to let his client die off in the jungle, and in return, Cruise will give him a G5 Gulfstream jet. As it turns out, McConaughey returns to the jungle to proudly announce to Stiller that he got him "Tivo in his house for the shoot!" The scene makes no sense, as there was nothing in his character previously to demonstrate any shred of conscious in him, so when McConaughey shows up in a long shot, at first you think it's the film director (played by Steve Coogan) who got blown up by an old land mine.