FILM: Tropic Thunder – Fun but flabby, and eats itself

The late, late, Tropic Thunder review – possibly in time for a DVD release, and the bigger multiplexes. Much of the first third of Ben Stiller’s comedy is unnecessary, and seems to exist largely for Steve Coogan, who gets killed so early on he becomes irrelevant. Why not just dump the actors straight in their jungle nightmare and fill in the blanks with the odd bit of canny dialogue? The film opens in a jawdropping all-action style that it goes on to spoof – lightly at first, before eagerly employing so many of the genre’s trappings that it becomes what it mocks. The budget is colossal, and overshadows the conclusion – explosions, pitched battles and the machinations of a drug-farming child. Boys with toys and all too much, too big.

The middle section lives up to its promise; Robert Downey Jr in blackface is superb, and the racial sparring with his actually black co-star is underused – this is the only point at which the film tests its limits. The ‘retard’ aspect, represented by Stiller’s action hero’s failed Oscar bid (in the role of a Dr Dolittle farmhand called ‘Simple Jack‘), is a must for lovers of the politically incorrect but occasionally veers into the blunt unfunniness of such genre clonkers as Sports Movie, aka The Comebacks (a little better than Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, etc…praise so faint you need a microscope to see it).

As the jungle frenzy hits its stride with Stiller murdering an endangered animal, it is cut-off – too quick, too quick. An all too brief musing on the actor’s mask and some spectacular makeup is all that really follows. In the back of it all is Tom Cruise as a bald, evil movie mogul with enormous hands and a taste for salacious R&B. While often called a cameo, it is much more than that; a flat-out rendition of the sinister and the terrible, culminating in an extraordinary thru-credits dance sequence that mesmerises the mind. Cruise is no stranger to playing the unpleasant (see Magnolia), but that shouldn’t detract from his comedy tour-de-force here. It’s not enough to like it simply because it’s ‘bold’ for him not to play the hero; like it because he’s damn good at it. A shame that can’t be said for the rest of the movie.

Stiller oils up for middle age, flexes movie muscle

Tropic Thunder made its debut in UK cinemas this weekend, and the reviews helpfully give an indication of its appeal. The high-minded (and faintly curmudgeonly) Derek Malcolm believes it isn’t as clever as it thinks, while Metro’s Larushka Ivan-Zadeh (a fabulous name if ever there was) finds it not to her taste. London Lite’s more geezerly Paul Connolly looks up to it just as Malcolm looks down. Most seem to agree that the best bits are at the start and, that if you can willingly disengage your brain and not expect grand satire, it should be decent if flabby fun. News Hour will hopefully return a verdict later in the week.

Quite why one should expect grand satire is unclear; Zoolander was fun but its target was very soft indeed. (Stiller is no Chris Morris nor, one imagines, does he aspire to be. Incidentally, Morris’s latest bombshell – a satire on terrorists – will be shuffling into cinemas, not TV.) As with media, the fashion industry moves so fast it is quickly beyond parody, especially given the long lead times of cinema. Dodgeball had a crack at the fitness industry, again a soft target – but all three films have something more startling in common: the frequently demonstrated physical perfection of Ben Stiller.

From the Magnum stare in Zoolander to his crotch pump in Dodgeball, to his rippled physique in both the latter and Tropic Thunder, there’s no getting away from the fact that Stiller’s hard abs steal the spotlight – all in the name of parody, of course. Biceps flex and sweat down a determined brow, cresting over muscles that mortal men simply should not have. Does Ben have that painting from Dodgeball hanging in his marital home? The comedian would not have looked out of place in Meet The Spartans, but for one thing – he has a sense of humour. So, what next? A comedy about the ridiculous extremes of athletics, weight lifting, or boxing? Arnold & Arnold: The Early Years? (A fictionalised retelling of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s struggles in Hollywood, when the actor shared an apartment with Gary Coleman – then riding high in Diff’rent Strokes. Stiller as Schwarzenegger, Robert Downey Jr as Coleman.)

Is this a midlife crisis? If so, it has been going on quite a while. Zoolander came out in 2001, when Stiller was 35 – Dodgeball three years later. Perhaps he just loves to sculpt and flaunt, starting every morning with a growl to the mirror: ‘Eye of the tiger Ben, eye of the tiger.’

It has been speculated that the motivation behind Nicolas Cage starring in the dull assassin thriller Bangkok Dangerous was a very public midlife crisis. Nicholas Barber of The Independent was left pondering just why it had been made when: “Cage strips off his motorcycle leathers to show off his tight vest and well-oiled biceps” and everything became clear.