5/5 Nam Bam!
  by Jean E. Pouliot (Newburyport, MA United States)
OK, so I am not a big Ben Stiller fan. As far as I am concerned, the man really cannot act and his films are gross, stupid and exploitative. But Tropic Thunder came recommended from my artsy kid, so I felt obligated to check it out. And glad I am that I did.

I don't ask or much from a film -- original ideas, tight writing, expressive acting, and a minimum of plot holes. Thankfully, craft is written all over this film. Stiller takes deadly aim at the Vietnam movie genre. The deliciously convoluted plot has Stiller's platoon shooting a Vietnam film that is far behind schedule and over budget. The only solution seems to be to put the spoiled actors in a warlike situation. But a series of events lands the boys in a real shooting war, and they need to use their meager wits to survive. By building his platoon from a potpourri of the genre's types, Stiller get to send up Nam films, the film industry, actors, and the genre's stock characters. His platoon has all the ingredients of the classic Nam film. There's the jive-talking black sergeant; the swaggering white honcho (Stiller), the nerd, the fat white guy (Jack Black) and the young black "blood". The combination gives Stiller the chance to set his types against each other to destroy old stereotypes. Taking method acting to the extreme, the older black character (Morton Downey, Jr.) is actually a white Aussie who underwent a pigmentation change for the movie. He speaks a 1960s black jive that thoroughly infuriates the "real" black character, a rapper who purveys a more contemporary "street" lingo. Behind this crew of misfits is Nick Nolte, playing a bedraggled, muttering, handless Vietnam war vet who wrote a book about his Nam exploits. An amazing Tom Cruise plays an out-of-control film mogul who strikes terror into his crews, even via teleconference.

Some of Stiller's swipes and plotting are pretty obvious. There's the big hetero character who turns out not to be and the big Asian crime boss who turns out not to be. And Stiller really has just two acting faces: stupidly confused and confusedly stupid. But, giving credit where credit is due, he was ridden the stupid horse all he way to the bank and beyond. Some folks might be offended by Stiller's portrayal of retarded "Simple Jack," a recurring reference to a role from his character's past that demonstrates his low-rent talent. But it worked for Forrest Gump, didn't it?

In Tropic Thunder, Stiller is at his parodic best. Don't miss the fake previews (I did) that set up the characters in their own normal genres. And don't miss the numerous riffs on successful Nam movies -- Stiller's take-off on the iconic scenes from Apocalypse Now, for instance, make that film look like a parody of itself.

The second disk, filled with the de rigueur cast interviews, is just so-so. I don't care about how they used CGI sparingly, and I only saw enough of the storyboarding to begin to whet my appetite. The film's visuals are terrific and stand on their own -- better to watch Disk 1 twice. But lay down the subtitles, because a lot of the terrific writing is drowned out by copter noise and deliberately garbled delivery.

Great Stuff! I might go against my better judgment and pick up another couple Stiller films!

3/5 Funny Spoof of Hollywood Thinking
  by Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States)
Ben Stiller's action hero has been suffering from a slump in his career, and audiences are tiring of his many-sequelled SCORCHER franchise, and they didn't go for it when he went all Billy Bob Thornton on them and played SIMPLE JACK as a bid for an Oscar nomination. He is the motive force behind the making of Tropic Thunder, but right away things go awry for a runaway production. Poor Steve Coogan as the beleaguered director is blamed for the slow pace of the filming--they are weeks behind schedule on the very first day.

The movie is super funny in parts, but other parts were bad. The whole set up that leaves Stiller (and a platoon of other actors) in the jungle without a clue, still believing they're making a movie, feels rushed and outlandish both at the same time. But at the same time the actors involved were all good (except for Stiller). Robert Downey Jr, as the Australian Daniel Day Lewis, Kirk Lazarus, is in blackface for his role here--and I didn't like that--but he's pretty amazing. Jack Black is convincing as the world's chubbiest heroin and crack addict, while Jay Baruchel from the Judd Apstow universe is much more convincing here than in anything I've seen him in since UNDECLARED. The problem with TROPIC THUNDER in a nutshell is this. For the movie to be funny, the actors have to hate each other. For the plot to work, they have to develop, under unfortunate conditions, the esprit de corps of Gunga Din. We can believe one alternative or the other, but don't ask us to do both.

3/5 Typical Ben Stiller
  by Jiang Xueqin (Toronto, Canada)
Ben Stiller is the most consistent media celebrity we have today. He often confuses being stupid with being funny, and his movies are mediocre but they are consistently mediocre and after a decade of his consistently mediocre movies ("Zoolander," "Dodgeball," "A Night at the Museum," etc.) we know how to best watch them: after a hard stressful day's work, laying on the living room couch drinking beer.

"Tropic Thunder" is yet another mediocre movie with a formulaic hackneyed storyline, stupid dialogue, and a lame, half-hearted performance from Ben Stiller. Yet at the same time the cinematography (shot in the lush beautiful hills and jungles of southeast Asia) is spectacular, the cast is all-star, and there are some genuinely funny and enjoyable moments in the movie. In the movie theater who didn't laugh and smile when that obnoxious Brit Steve Coogan got blown-up? And Tom Cruise gives the best performance of his career, dressed up as a fat and balding tycoon who dances badly to hip hop.

And then there are two superb performances from Stiller's co-stars Jack Black and Robert Downey, Jr. Jack Black is outrageously funny as a heroin-addicted movie star whose signature performance is a fat man who farts. Robert Downey, Jr. is mostly incomprehensible with his slurred but rhythmic late sixties African-American slang and swagger but the idea of him playing an Australian who plays an African-American soldier is funny and it's always fun to watch him on the big screen -- even with this all-star cast Robert Downey Jr. is easily the most talented.

We have to give Ben Stiller credit for understanding the demands and mentality of todays' movie-going audiences. Ben Stiller provides a very light and entertaining film with moments of tremendous hilarity, and he mercifully keeps the experience short -- usually, only about ninety minutes. But we also know that Ben Stiller is a talented comedian, and it seems that nowadays he no longer cares so he no longer tries. The concept of a group of spoiled Hollywood stars filming an action movie only to find themselves in a real-life action situation is juvenile and cliche -- I'm sure that Ben Stiller in grade six had more creative ideas than this.

It's one thing to not care and not try but it's another to moralize at the same time. Halfway through the movie the two nemeses Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. have a silly conversation about playing retards in a movie. The Ben Stiller character says that he invested a lot emotionally into playing a retard, and felt often at times he was indeed a retard. The Robert Downey Jr. character, an Australian method actor who has already won five Academy Awards, replies that the secret is to be retarded without being fully retarded -- Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man" and Tom Hanks in "Forrest Gump" looked retarded but they weren't, and that's what allowed the audience to emotionally identify with them -- and that's why they won Oscars.

I strongly disagree. If you're going to be stupid then just be stupid. The last really good comedy I saw was "Blades of Glory," and that was just an outrageously silly affair -- and it made no attempt to disguise its silliness -- how could it be when its two main protagonist, after giving the figure skating performance of a lifetime, shot up to the sky on their skates and sailed the Heavens?

But "Tropic Thunder" holds back too much, and thus severely restrains the talents of its cast. The movie slowly and cleverly builds up the Jack Black character's heroin addiction, and when he -- after an agonizing couple of days without heroin -- actually finds himself in a heroin warehouse that should be the funniest moment of the whole movie. But the movie holds back -- because drugs are bad for you, I suppose. And then there's Matthew McConaughey who plays the Ben Stiller's character's agent, who when his client gets kidnapped by drug lords, is forced into a moral dilemma -- whether to save his client, or take a bribe from his Hollywood overlords to let his client die. I don't know about you but I think everyone in this whole world would pick a Gulfstream-Five over Ben Stiller but -- because Ben Stiller's the director, I suppose -- the agent chooses Ben Stiller.

I suppose that I can keep on critiquing the movie but at the same time I enjoyed it. And the reason is that I've been meaning to go to a movie for a long time, and there's nothing else out there that's watchable. So it's an advantage to be consistently mediocre when all your competitors are just getting worse and worse.

4/5 Very Funny Tom Cruise and Robert Downey were great.
  by C. HAWKINS (Castro Valley, CA USA)
The whole cast was really good. I have watched this DVD probably five times already, and liked it each time. There are not many movies that have replay value like that for me. It is definitely a guy movie, and those seem to be lacking in number these days.

5/5 Highly Entertaining
  by Jerry Daugherty
Though a smidge violent, this move is a Must See - great acting all around.