Word: tropicalism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...parody of war movies and a pinprick in the helium balloon of Hollywood egos, Tropic Thunder caps a hectic summer of action films and star-driven comedies and is designed as a blend and a semiloving critique of both genres. The picture is savvy to the max, maybe to excess; but Stiller, who also directed and co-wrote the movie, surely figures that in the blogosphere age, no film can be too inside--it's where everyone is. He's been there all his life, as the son of (Jerry) Stiller and (Anne) Meara, a comedy duo of over...
...conceit this time is that three stars have come to Vietnam to shoot a war film called Tropic Thunder, based on a book by a fabled Vietnam vet (Nick Nolte). Each star is in a career rut: Tugg Speedman (Stiller) needs the sweet nectar of acclaim, Jeff Portnoy (Black) wants to shift from farce to drama, and Method man Lazarus (Downey) so hopes to hear critics' cheers for his role as an African-American sergeant that he has undergone a surgical procedure to darken his skin. With the film a month behind schedule after five days of shooting, the director...
...adventurers has served movie comedies from the 1940s (Gene Kelly's The Pirate and a bunch of Hope-Crosby Road pictures) to the '80s (¡Three Amigos!). It speaks to the bluster and resilience of show people; when in mortal peril, they do improv and survive. The difference in Tropic Thunder is that the main characters are more eccentric than likable. That's just what you'd expect in a Stiller movie...
Problem is, the Tropic Thunder stars seem rich at first, but they don't grow; they grow repetitious. Lazarus is a mix of Russell Crowe, Daniel Day-Lewis and Robert De Niro in his body-punishing Raging Bull days, and Downey brings a nice pomposity to his blackface posturing and righteous-pimp drawl. (The joke, by the way, is clearly not on African Americans; it's on the actor's belief that he can play anyone.) But Lazarus and the others out there in the jungle don't evolve or devolve; they are figures from an SNL skit...
...here's what Les Grossman might see as a money quote: "Tropic Thunder is the theoretically funniest movie movie of the year." Make that "... of the year...