Tropic Thunder

Review by Sean Lynch

Ben Stiller has been getting away with his star studded satires on Hollywood for over a decade now, thanks largely to the ridiculous budgets thrown at him by the MTV Movie Awards.

The skits have always been short, sharp and hilarious highlights of a career which has recently started to take a dive into the mundane.

But we always knew he was capable of more than Something About Mary VI : Mary Goes To The Bahamas, and it seems like the time has finally arrived.

Tropic Thinder is the perfect comedy movie Ben Stiller has been threatening to make for years - and its well worth the wait.

If George Clooney's Oceans 11 served as a cinematic time capsule of the Who's Who of the respected A-List at the beginning of this decade, then Tropic Thunder is it's Black Sheep cousin that boasts the most impressive assembly of comedic (and high profile) talent ever seen on screen at the one time.

Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr (whose Night At The Museum, Kung Fu Panda and Iron Man each grossed over $300M at the worldwide box office) lead an enormous ensemble cast in this truly epic action comedy about a group of self absorbed actors who set out to make the most expensive war film ever made.

After ballooning costs forces studio boss Les Grossman (played by an unrecognisable Tom Cruise) to cancel the movie after only one day (the movie is three months behind schedule... due to one hell of an explosion), the frustrated director refuses to stop shooting and leads his cast into the jungles of South East Asia where he plans to finish the film no matter what... or how real.

The sheer stupid enormity of the film (it is one of the rare cases where you can see where every cent of the budget went) makes up for any weak spots - and there really aren't many at all.

In fact, I would go as far to say it is one of the best comedies of the decade. Not in the same "Laugh-Per-Minute" realm of Superbad or Anchorman, but it must be commended for the sheer unrelenting joy that it provides.

From the countless cameos (I won't ruin them for you, because half the fun is seeing familiar faces just pop up), to the witty satire, the stupidity of seeing cute Asian children brutally shooting and stabbing grown men, the Hollywood in jokes (although, at times it might be a little too in-joke... in that unless you are getting paid $20M a movie yourself, the jokes might go over your head), to the spot on mock trailers which precede the film.

Everything just seems to work perfectly.

What really stands out about Tropic Thunder is just that it is just so refreshing to see such a well put together, unpredictable, genuinely funny and original comedy coming from these stars who are so often pidgeon holed into releasing such repetitive formulaic junk.

Even Cruise delivers a cuss-ridden performance which is outside of the box, with a take on the Hollywood studio big men, giving us a character that is half "Weinstein" and half "Paramount Executives that fired him after M:I:3 bombed".

DVD EXTRAS

Excellent commentaries from Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr, here sets this disc off to a super start. It's very rare to find an entertaining Commentary - it's usually the realm of movie nerds only... but with the talent on display here, it's a lot of fun.

There are a bunch of clever featurettes including "Blowing Shit Up", "The Hot LZ" and "Make-Up Test with Tom Cruise with Optional Intro". It also has it's fair share of fluff with "The Cast of Tropic Thunder" and such too.

Sadly, the one disc version only contains a trailer for the mock doco "Rain Of Madness" - I'm assuming a 2 Disc Edition isn't to far away with that in toe.

Stand out extra has to be the hilarious MTV Movie Awards sketch to promote the film. It's what Stiller does best.

Conclusion: Movie 90% Extras: 70%