**WARNING** Mild spoil­ers ahead, noth­ing that isn’t all over the press.

Tropic Thun­der has to go down as the film I most want to watch while stoned and drunk.  I was neither of these things although I was in New Zea­l­and, which at least was dif­fer­ent from being down the Odeon in Lon­don.  Yes I can attest that it rains in New Zea­l­and.  Such rain that even David Bowie would be sat­is­fied.  So Cesca and I did what all Eng­lish do when it rains. 

We went to the cinema.

Unlike the last pic­ture I saw in the cinema, Dark Knight (which I watched in Alice Springs no less!), I am not going to hold off review­ing it.  Dark Knight requires some con­text to review and con­sequently I have just down­loaded the pre­vi­ous film Bat­man Begins.  This will enable me to judge the film against some­thing of a yard­stick of qual­ity, some­thing for it to live up to. 

There is no such film for Tropic Thun­der!  Noth­ing I have ever seen meas­ures up to this movie in terms of “fuck­ing insan­ity”.  This is per­haps the ulti­mate “fan­boy film”, one which will live on in stu­dent flats and dorm rooms for many years.  One that will be chucked in the Blu­eRay player after many a night out drink­ing.  It exists in that strange and some­times bril­liant genre of movie in that it is “Hol­ly­wood mak­ing fun of itself” film.  The sort of film that has sly nods to genre clas­sics and is essen­tially art recre­at­ing itself by burn­ing all that has been held dear up until now.  Not that this film is as smart and import­ant as The Player, nor scrip­ted as well as Get Shorty.  Nor is its sub­ject ori­ginal, being both clas­sic­ally por­trayed in Bow­finger (A film within a film) and Hot Shots! Part Deux (The Viet­nam war as humour). 

What it has is that it is fun­nier than all of them.

All com­edy either comes down to two things.  Script or Per­form­ance.  This film has an excel­lent script in places, some of which has drawn a lot of cri­ti­cism, but it is in the per­form­ances that it really shines.  Each of the act­ors in this film are excel­lent in this respect, although the greatest per­form­ance is the now phoenix-like star of Robert Downey Jr’s. 

 

His entire char­ac­ter is a skil­fully presen­ted joke that lasts the entire movie.  Not at one moment does a joke about his char­ac­ter being an obsess­ive mega-method actor, who can’t “switch off” his per­form­ance, fall flat and they provide at least 70% of the jokes in the movie that work. 

Some reviews have remarked how this stella per­form­ance shades the oth­ers, espe­cially Jack Black (who is after all more than cap­able of hold­ing a film on his own), but this misses the fact that Jacks char­ac­ter is telling a dif­fer­ent joke.  The clue is in the amaz­ing, simply amaz­ing, makeup on Jack.  In the first few scenes he looks every bit the hard bit­ten Nam Vet.  Think Tom Sizemore in Black Hawk Down.  He is all blaz­ing eyes and gungho.  Once the cam­era stops he is miss­ing his assist­ant, needs room ser­vice and eats drugs to fuel his per­form­ance.  This is a cri­tique of one type of act­ing.  It is almost (pos­sibly) Jack rib­bing himself? 

So it also goes with Stiller’s char­ac­ter, who wants to be taken more ser­i­ously as an actor, he is an faded star who has had action hits aplenty but finds them hol­low.  He has fool­ishly acted in a ser­i­ous heart felt film to try and win an award, which would give him back his self belief, but it failed at the box­of­fice.  His life is essen­tially sur­real and he is lost.  To such an extent that he can­not spot real­ity from the spe­cial effects laden films he has starred in.  This is all the more clear when he eats from the nick of a severed head because he thinks it is prop.

The script doesn’t stop there.  There are clever nods to all sorts of Hol­ly­wood movies and ste­reo­types.  We all spot­ted the easy jokes about Eddie Murphy, Snake Pliskin and Forest Gump, but there are even more subtle ones about Raid­ers of the Lost Ark, The Dear Hunter and Apo­ca­lypse Now.

Then there is the fun­ni­est joke per­form­ance since Michael Cane played Aus­tin Powers’s dad.  I am talk­ing about Tom Cruise as the stu­dio exec­ut­ive Les Gross­man.  Wear­ing a fat suit, with a bald head, fake hair and scream­ing more pro­fan­it­ies than your aver­age pimp, Cruise owns every scene he is in.  Like a more viol­ent ver­sion of the Stu­dio Exec in the Orange Adverts, he scares every­one by scream­ing at them at full volume.

Les Gross­man: Now I want you to take a step back… and lit­er­ally fuck your own face!

I can see the cast­ing meet­ing even now:

Cast­ing Agent 1 :  “Tom, Tom, Tom, we need to break you out of all this neg­at­ive media coverage.”

Tom’s Assist­ant : “Yeah like, get every­one off your back about the Sci­ento­logy thing Tom, its start­ing to define you Tom.”

Cast­ing Agent 1 : “Your an Actor, Tom!”

Tom : [nods] “I am, I am an actor!”

Cast­ing Agent 2 :  “We need to get you in some­thing dif­fer­ent, some­thing not so serious…something with mojo!”

Cast­ing Agent 1 :  “Some­thing with, with… Jack Black maybe?”

Tom’s Assist­ant :  [Look­ing thought­ful] “Or Ben Stil­ler, like a cameo in Dodge­ball 2 or something!”

Tom : “I like Robert Downey Jr too.  Iron Man rocked”

Cast­ing Agent 1 : [snaps his fin­gers] “Tom, I have just the vehicle for you, some­thing that will get the people talk­ing about your movies again Tom.”

Cast­ing Agent 2 : [nods] “Some­thing funny Tom, some­thing you can really get your teeth into!”

[Tom yawns]

Cast­ing Agent 1 : “Some­thing with Downey, Black and Stil­ler in it Tom!”

Cast­ing Agent 2 : “And you get to do the booty dance!”

Tom : [sud­denly inter­ested] “The booty dance?”

Cast­ing Agent 2: “The booty dance Tom!”

Tom’s Assist­ant : “He can do the booty dance in this picture?”

Tom : [Tom Cruise holds up two fin­gers] “Twice.”

Cast­ing Agent 1 :  [gulps] “Twice?”

Cast­ing Agent 2 :  [wide eyed] “You want to do the booty dance twice Tom?  No one can do the booty dance twice in one film Tom…”

[They exchange looks]

Tom’s Assist­ant : “This is Tom Cruise gen­tle­man.  He can do the booty dance more than once!”

Cast­ing Agent 2: “You can?”

Tom: “I can!”

Tom’s Assist­ant :  “He can!”

Cast­ing Agent 1: [point­ing] “Tom you’ve got a deal!”

[Tom Cruise Smiles]

Tom Cruise, all is for­given.  Any­one able to do the booty dance twice in one film can believe the sky is vanilla for all I care!

So, while this film gets bet­ter with the assist­ance of friends or alco­hol (whatever’s your poison), I watched it in an empty cinema on the far side of the world sober as a judge and still found it bloody funny.

I give it 8.

 

Regards,

 

Basho

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