I got to see Tropic Thunder last Friday night (thanks Xbox Live! and Guy). It was a typically Ben Stiller film, poking fun at the over blown egos of the over-pampered film industry. Managing to deconstruct the ridiculousness of his own industry from the inside, he creates a biting satire of the industry’s egotism.
In the great canon of Ben Stiller, Zoolander has always sat at its zenith. Tropic Thunder almost reaches those same dizzying heights, only missing the peak because we’ve come to expect that kind of humour from Stiller. The production has become slicker since the heady days of Zoolander, and the quality of his other films means he was able to assemble an amazing cast.
Robert Downey Jr as Kirk Lazarus manages some of the funniest lines in the film with his depiction of a ’serious’ Australian actor who gets his skin dyed black in order to play the role. The controversial retard conversation which ahas been widely reported in the media had me in stitches. I need to qualify that it wasn’t that they were making fun of the differently abled, but of actors who exploit them in order to get awards.
The casting of Tom Cruise as Les Grossman may have just resurected his career as a proper actor, beyond the shining embodiment of Scientology. His grotesquely unsexy deptiction of the studio exec had my skin crawling throughout the film, Guy accused me of being the stupidest person in the world when I asked him if it was in fact was Cruise about a minute before it ended.
If you do get along to see the film make sure you’re not late as you’ll miss the brilliant introductory trailers for the actors. The repressed sexual desire between two priests which is acted out through very expressive pouting will stick with me for a very long time.
Verdict: Don’t torrent this one, please shell out your £11 so that I don’t have to get Ben Stiller confused with Adam Sandler and films like Don’t Mess with the Zohan don’t get made.