Tropic Thunder

There are some things that are certain about Tropic Thunder. First, it is funny. No, it's not packed with laugh-out-loud jokes from beginning to end, but it does offer more than a fair share of hilarious moments. Secondly, it is very true that Robert Downey Jr.'s performance is memorable. The words unforgettable or incredible wouldn't be entirely out of place, even though Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight was nonetheless appropriately the winner of that year's Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. In case you hadn't heard, RDJ plays Kirk Lazarus, a method actor who undergoes a controversial skin pigmentation procedure in order to play the role of a black soldier in the film-within-a-film. Throughout the (actual) movie, he, like Robert Downey Jr., remains in character, regardless of whether or not the camera is rolling. As the (real) movie plays out, Lazarus' intentions for doing so begin to show, as he is revealed to invest himself in the characters he plays so that he can avoid being himself.

Now here's where things get a little confusing. The movie is inteded to be a satire of actors/Hollywood/the process of making films. That's great. In many cases, it's very successful, such as with its opening fake trailers or its inclusion of real-world celebrities playing themselves (Tobey Maguire, Lance Bass, etc.). What I'm unclear about is how far the satire goes. Ben Stiller, who also writes and directs, plays Tugg Speedman, fresh off the 6th movie in his most famous series, whose foray into serious acting lost him even more credibility. Then there's Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), who is famous for Eddie Murphy-style multiple-character/toilet humour comedies. So, for the record, Jack Black, who has played fat slobs in movies like Orange County, The School Of Rock, and Nacho Libre is playing a guy famous for playing fat slobs, while Ben Stiller of Meet The Fockers, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, and Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian plays a character who has milked the one character he was known for, for all it was worth. The line between satire and irony has never been so blurry. Whether or not it's funny essentially comes down to intent. If Stiller was being self-conscious when he decided to make fun of over-the-top actors with a penchant for sequelery, then who better to play the character than himself.

Where things continue to get muddled is that, toward the middle and end, Speedman and Portnoy stop being actors who play the kinds of characters that Stiller and Black would play, they actually become the characters. Speedman, faced with absurd situations resorts to ridiculous behaviour and over-acting, while Portnoy, struggling with heroin withdrawal, ends up shirtless with his hands literally down his diaper. Instead of keeping up the satire, Stiller and Black seem to forget which character they are playing, and instead, fall into their own respective bad habits. Unless that's actually the point, in which case the movie becomes an even more intense (an inconsistent) meta-satire, which, I fear, may be giving it too much credit. It could just be that seeing Jack Black rolling around on the ground without a shirt on, trying very hard to be like Chris Farley, is the kind of thing that Ben Stiller finds funny. Thankfully, there's enough other comedy in Tropic Thunder to get us through.

Rating: 3.5 stars