Tropic Thunder

Diminishing Signification Through Parody

The world is a cruel place for actors. There's just no hiding the fact that actors are totally the playthings of circumstance who get passed around as names and a brand and a look as their names become a commodity, and their identity becomes laden with roles they take on, but this experience is actually hollow because they didn't really do the things the characters did in the films or plays they appeared in, they simply acted it. Their very existence is Martin Heidegger's future, where in he said the future was a shining darkness, stretched across like a screen (I always thought he must have meant movies). This confusion of identity and meaning of course only visits itself upon the successful ones. The less successful simply travel through roles without acquiring any meaning at all. They simply pass through the business like so much scenery and fodder.

So when you consider a film directed by a star about stardom, you are forced to reckon with the dual reality where actors are playing a certain kind of fictionalisation of their largely fiction-enhanced lives, where their identities simply become crutches for their every day existence.
Tropic Thunder then is that rare film where the filmmaker tries to open up the backstage, only to turn that backstage into a cornucopia of laughs.

What's Good About It

For a start, it's just flat out funny in at least 50% of the scenes. The much discussed 'retard' exchange is more insightful than advertised. As Robert Downey Jr., who is playing an Australian who is method-acting his way as a black American explains, playing the full retard will not net you an Oscar. It's a great thesis, explained in wonderfully succinct detail. Playing the full retard, is not good.

The comedy is decidedly black. This is no pun, even with Robert Downey Jr's Sgt. Osiris character. The humour is in many ways a kind of gallows humour best reserved for sardonic laughs. You get the feeling that the people who would enjoy this film the most are in fact, actors. Sure enough, the director steps on a mine and is dead by the end of the second reel. However, his blasted head does get played around by Ben Stiller in classic black comedy style where handling of a corpse is de rigeur. There is also the continuing sideshow of the Agent and the Studio boss which highlights much of the gallows humour.

What's Bad About It
The film takes giant swings at the ego of star actors, but at the same time, none of it is anything that is profoundly wounding. The nudge-wink factor makes the film pull short of condemning anybody. Even Robert Downey Jr.'s excellent pay-out of Russell Crow has the air of a gentle homage. I guess I wanted more poison in it, but because it's made by the people who inhabit the centre of the same star-actor universe, it stops short of being truly cutting.

The film also never finds the right mode of comedy. In parts it is happy doing parody, but in other parts it is reaching out for a more interesting character comedy. The film vacillates between these modes of comedy and this contributes to an alienating effect. You're never sure if you're meant to invest anything into these characters. If you do, you could be betrayed by the film-makers; if you don't the story renders itself largely meaningless. It's a little confusing.

The film is at its funniest when the parody is right, or the commentary on the film business is sharp. The film is at its worst when the jokes are gratuitous fat jokes, fart jokes and animal jokes.

What's Interesting About It

The film kicks off with a bunch of trailers for fictional films. Then we are thrown into a Vietnam movie action sequence which climaxes with a parody of the the death of Sgt. Elias in 'Platoon'. Then it is revealed to be a movie in the making and we enter the world of fiction within fiction. This gets a little trickier as we navigate the book the fictional movie is based upon turns out to be a complete fabrication within the film Universe as well, when Nick Nolte confesses he was never in Vietnam, and we find he never lost his hands. So the film is about a fake film being made about a phony experience written by a phony man made by actors trying to impersonate these phony characters with as much 'realism' as they can muster.

The film actually comes close to confronting something about fiction all the while showing the ineptness of shallow star actors to convey any real emotional truths. We almost glimpse something about why we watch this stuff. The closest film in terms of this polemic was 'Galaxy Quest' where the good aliens believed the events portrayed in a TV show much like 'Star Trek' to be true and when they find out it was fiction, fail to understand why humans would do such a thing.

Why do we do fiction? At all? It's an interesting thing to ponder.

Other Thoughts

Robert Downey Jr. is simply amazing. After his turn as Iron Man/Tony Stark, his performance in this film is like a magic trick. His Australian accent is a little suspect, but as impersonations of Russell Crowe go, it's hilarious. If you ever meet Russell Crowe, I suggest you don't bring it up because he most likely will punch you in the face. Then again, I suspect he punches everybody in the face at least once.

Jack Black as the addict was not as interesting as his other roles in the last few years. Maybe it's good that he got away from the rock dude schtick he has been building up over 3 or 4 pictures. And yet, I kind of miss that guy. This guy he played was nowhere near as intense.

Tom Cruise... *Ugh* :(
Going into watch the film, I heard his performance as Lee Grossman was great. Perhaps because I had been told so much about it, I expected too much. I was mostly underwhelmed. All I saw was Tom Cruise paying out on studio execs. Which is fine, but it wasn't really anywhere near as brilliant as what Robert Downey Jr. was doing, nor was it as interesting as I was led to believe. As for the dance, it reminded me of his little dance routine in 'Risky Business'.