Tropic Thunder (08)
directed by Ben Stiller
**1/2
This is a raunchy movie. As in, I'm imagining there were sailors in the audience who blushed, multiple times. Ben Stiller is back in the director's chair, not exactly long-awaited after the satiric froufrou fest that was Zoolander. Here, look for satire turned up to 11, as the making of one war movie brings together three power-ambivalent stars, one hapless director, a hairy producer, the book's shell-shocked author, a crazy special effects guy, and a lot of non-extra, real-life Vietnamese soldiers.
It's a clever premise: what would happen if a war movie accidentally stumbled into fighting real enemies? And there is definitely more than one clever scene. Robert Downey Jr in particular is not only enjoyable, but actually impressive in his role as an Oscar-winning Australian actor who's so much of a method actor that he receives a medical treatment to darken his skin for the role of an African-American.
It's over the top, and definitely not PC...but funny (at times). That's the bar Stiller shoots for, time after time, throughout the movie. It's what keeps things unexpected on the road to a fairly predictable plot — it keeps the film making fun of itself, and the movie industry in general. Oh, and Tom Cruise plays an almost funny, mostly repulsive producer. It's also what keeps it off-color.
That's what you need to know: it's one of the raunchiest films I've seen in a long time, which was a surprise to me since it's not pitched like one (i.e., it stars Ben Stiller and not Will Ferrell). It's also raunchier than you're thinking it was going to be. If you've got any sense about you, you'll catch the funny, somewhat muted clips on YouTube, clap for Downey when/if he gets a nomination, and skip the movie.
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