Tropic Thunder

(Movie Review)

I'd heard a lot about this movie, so when it recently hit the shelves of my video store here in Japan, I thought I'd check it out. 

Before I watched it, I asked a co-worker what he thought of it. "I don't know man," he said. "With all the big name comics they had in that film, I expected it to be a lot funnier than it actually was. I mean it's okay. It's worth watching. But it's not near as funny as it should have been." 

For my money though, I thought it was alright. Sure, there were a few slow points, but it had more than enough good laughs to get a thumbs up from me. (A comedy where you're laughing non-stop through the whole thing is pretty rare anyway). 

It does indeed, as my co-worker pointed out, have a very impressive star studded cast: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Nick Nolte, Tom Cruise, Matthew McConaughey, and Steve Coogan all have major roles. And that's not even counting all the people they got to make cameo appearances. 

I had heard about the "retard controversy" (W) even out here in Japan. (It was mentioned in the Daily Yomiuri review--link here). Personally I didn't think it was a big deal. Maybe I'm not as sensitive to this issue as I could be, and maybe I would feel different if someone in my family was affected by it, but I thought the movie was making fun of Hollywood's portrayal of the mentally impaired (and the related conversation about how to, and how not to, get Oscars for this portrayal).

What bothered me more than the "retard controversy" was the fact that most of the movie was an extended joke about the traumatic experience of US soldiers during the Vietnam War. And to be honest, I'm a bit surprised that the media dust-up appears to be less disturbed by this than about the "retard" jokes. 

The film opens up with a sequence which is very obviously a spoof of "Platoon". 

I was reminded of a high school paper I wrote for a film studies class. I had chosen to watch "Platoon" and "The Bridge over the River Kwai" and then write a compare and contrast paper. I commented in the paper somewhere that, "I found both movies interesting and amusing." 

I didn't really mean any offense by this line. I felt like I needed to have two adjectives to make it sound complete. I was trying to avoid using the word "interesting" twice, and I guess I must not have had a good thesaurus handy. But when I gave the paper to my parents to proofread, I got really chewed out for that word "amusing". 

"Under no circumstances is the movie 'Platoon' supposed to be amusing. Maybe you're not old enough to handle these kind of movies yet." 

I also remember my high school film teacher saying when he first saw "Platoon" in the theaters in the 1980s, after the credits finished and the lights came on there were veterans in the theater just sitting there weeping. 

And now, we're invited to laugh at all that pain. 

I know the film is supposed to be making fun of Vietnam War movies, and not Vietnam veterans, but that's a fine line to walk. The movies were, after all, an attempt to portray what the veterans had really been through. And could you make a parody of "Schindler's List" using the same logic? 

But should the subject be off limits? Is any subject off limits in this day and age? After watching "South Park", "Family Guy" and "Robot Chicken", I've laughed at (or at least sat through) comedy routines on just about every taboo imaginable. Our generation has completed the task the baby boomers started of smashing every sacred cow in sight. For better or for worse, there's just nothing left to be offended by anymore. 

From this parody of "Platoon", we move into a scene where Ben Stiller is playing a character who has both his arms blown off. He's trying to cry in the scene, but Robert Downey Jr. starts crying first, and Ben Stiller is so upset by this he can't bring himself to cry. Which leads to an argument between them and the hapless director Steve Coogan, which ends with Robert Downey Jr. walking off and ruining an expensive special effects scene. With apologies to my co-worker, you can't tell me that's not pretty funny. 

...Although, to be honest I didn't really appreciate the scene until I re-watched the movie. The rivalry between Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr, and the way Ben Stiller's character feels intimidated by Robert Downey Jr.'s acting skills, is not established until later in the movie. This is one example where the movie could have done with some better editing. 

Although it might be tempting to think, as my co-worker did, that the more stars that are crammed into the movie the bigger the laughs should be, in reality the more actors you have working in the movie, the more character arcs you have to cram into a short movie, and the more difficult it becomes to force jokes out of it. (This was something mentioned in the DVD commentaries as well). 

But, as I said above, there were enough funny points in this movie to make up for an over-stuffed cast and a convoluted script. 

Link of the Day
Interesting Chomsky interview here following up years afterwards on the documentary "Manufacturing Consent". It's subtitled for a Japanese audience, but the audio is in English. Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Lots of good stuff in here, but I was particularly interested in his comments about the dangers of the internet to activism. People can spend all their time blogging about social issues instead of doing the hard work of actually organizing in their community. 

Obviously I'm a bit sensitive to this because it strikes a chord with me.
(Although in my defense, in the Japanese countryside it's a bit harder to be involved in social issues than it is in a major city back home. I like to think that when I was in the States, I was reasonably involved in stuff).

Tropic Thunder: Movie Review (Scripted)