HOLLYWOOD loves to spoof itself – not least because it makes those involved look like awfully good sports. In Tropic Thunder, a blockbuster war epic that makes fun of other blockbuster war epics, the chief beneficiary already seems to be Tom Cruise,
whose unbilled cameo as an ear-shrivellingly profane studio boss reveals an uncanny knack for getting under the skin of a relentless egomaniac. It is his best-received performance since he stopped jumping on Oprah's sofa.
There are many targets in Tropic Thunder; Vietnam veterans who write books, recovering drug addicts, the flatulent, and whoever fancies their chances of directing Platoon 2. But the main prey is that overpaid paragon of privilege, the star actor, and Ben Stiller – who directed and co-wrote the script with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen – makes free with the whine and neuroses.
Tugg Speedman (Stiller) is an action star whose career has started to die hard since a disastrous attempt to set Oscar bait by playing a mentally disabled character named, like his film, Simple Jack.
In need of a hit, Speedman packs his epic new war picture Tropic Thunder with marquee players.
Up for a change of pace is comedy superstar and hard drug fan Jeff Portnoy, whose multiple flatulent roles in a series called The Fatties bear more than a passing resemblance to Eddie Murphy's Klumps and Martin Lawrence's Big Momma character. Also on board is Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr), a pedantic Australian actor who doesn't break character until he's done a commentary track for the DVD, and undergoes a pigmentation process in order to play a black sergeant. A combination of Russell Crowe and Daniel Day-Lewis at their most lethally committed, he's clearly a man who will dye for his art.
However, his faux-Shaftisms fail to impress Brandon T Jackson's rapper-turned-actor Alpa Chino, whose consistent disapproval of Lazarus' impersonation is useful because it saves us as an audience from having to do it instead.
Within a week, the movie is a month behind schedule. To save the production, their in-over-his-head director (Steve Coogan) is encouraged to dump the actors in the Vietnamese jungle and make them improvise their scenes on the fly while he films everything "guerrilla-style" with hidden cameras. These plans are transformed by some carelessness with a landmine, an armed gang of Asian opiate dealers who mistake the dress-up soldiers for the real military, and an apocalyptic encounter with a pre-teen drug lord, who happens to own and adore a copy of Simple Jack.
Tropic Thunder has had its controversies even before it opened. Downey's neo-minstrel act was greeted with suspicion while groups representing the disabled have railed against the film's repeated use of the term "retard" to describe the Simple Jack character. Some have even suggested boycotting Tropic Thunder, when really they'd be better off picketing the DVD section for selling Forrest Gump.
A more relevant charge is that Tropic Thunder comes close to being seduced by the physical excesses of the war-is-hell blockbusters it is supposed to be savaging. A parody picture can justify the muscular camerawork of John Toll, who also worked on Braveheart and The Thin Red Line among other epic warrior pictures – but there's no real excuse for the film to spend so much time pootling around the jungle on sub-Rambo missions. And you also can't help noticing that – spoof or not – Ben Stiller's impressive set of pecs aren't treated as part of the joke.
In most satires of Hollywood, someone gets spared – a put-upon director, a sinned-against writer or a powerlist-impaired actor – but at least Tropic takes a bite out of everyone before it eventually contracts into a string of gags about self-obsessed actors. Some of the gags are pretty good too – especially a faux trailer for Lazarus' forthcoming period priests-in-love drama, Satan's Alley. Tom Cruise may startle us with his swearathons but nothing else in Tropic's sarcastic Hollywood blitzkrieg comes close to topping the moment when Downey Jr exchanges agonised Lady Di eyes across a rosary with fellow Brokeback Monk-man, Tobey Maguire.
• On general release from Friday
The full article contains 709 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
