Tropic Thunder

This week, Kimberly and Chris hit up another one of their simple pleasures: the weekday matinee. The current feature? Ben Stiller, Robert Downey, Jr. and Jack Black in the silly Tropic Thunder.

As always here first, the trailer:


The farcical comedy about the filming of a blockbuster, big budget Vietnam War film gone awry. Ben Stiller as the action film Scorcher VI star Tugg Speedman (whose Hollywood stock has fallen dramatically with his recent flop about a retarded boy, Simple Jack); Jack Black as comedian Jeff Portnoy, whose currently greatest moviemaking experience has been the Eddie Murphy-esque fatsuit comedy The Fatties; and House of Gordon favorite Robert Downey, Jr. as Kirk Lazarus, the Academy Award winning actor who recently starred in the Brokeback Mountain-esque film Satan's Alley, about two monks who dare not publicly express their love for each other ("starring 5-time Academy Award winner Kirk Lazarus, and MTV Movie Award Best Kiss winner Tobey Maguire"). Fake trailers for all three films precede Tropic Thunder on the screen. Nice.

The antics of these pampered and spoiled actors threaten to completely shelve the film, leading the director to take drastic action to finish the film soon with usable footage: drop them into the jungle where hidden cameras and pyrotechnics will comprise a "guerilla-style" of filmmaking. Keep in character, who knows where the cameras will be. Of course this takes a dastardly turn as the boys encounter real-life jungle drug smugglers with real guns and real fists that the actors initially believe to be part of the film.

Hilarious hijinks ensue.

Robert Downey, Jr. is spectacular in his role. Freakishly blue-eyed and heavily accented Austrailian actor Kirk Lazarus undergoes a pigmentation procedure to become, well, black. Such a committed actor to his craft that even when the cameras are off, he stays in his alternative race character. "I keep in character until we record the DVD commentary." Classic.

Plenty of other stars make their mark in the movie, current and up-and-coming ones. Nick Nolte as the scarred handless veteran upon whose book the film is based, Matthew McConaughey as the agent who fights to make sure TiVo is available to his client on the southeast Asia set, and an unmentionable actor who portrays the maniacal, hirsute (yet bald), portly movie studio chief whose performance almost steals the show from Downey, Jr.

It's silly. It's ridiculous. It's terribly offensive to the mentally challenged and those who love them. The Simple Jack flop is an underlying story here, with its small fan base providing background. Plus there's Lazarus warning Tuggmann with some acting advice never to go "full retard"; there are no awards for actors who go "full retard".

It was 90 minutes of side-splitting laughter for the Gordons.

The House of Gordon movie score? An easy Full price.