Ben Stiller’s War

Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller, 2008)

Ben Stiller co-wrote, directed, and starred in Tropic Thunder, and the film’s big budget is a sign that studio heads still have confidence in Stiller to deliver a solid, audience-pleasing comedy, despite a somewhat mixed track record in recent years. And for the most part, he does. This is Stiller’s first effort as director since Zoolander, and it’s amongst the better of his recent films.

The concept is that a bunch of actors are making a Vietnam war film: the headline performers are Stiller, as an action hero; Robert Downey Jr as a self-important Australian actor (think Russell Crowe) who has had himself surgically altered to play an African American, and now never breaks character; and Jack Black, as an obnoxious lowbrow comedian. The film  is going disastrously over budget, so the director (Steve Coogan) decides to film it “guerrilla style,” with the actors under surveillance in the real jungle. Unfortunately the plans quickly go awry, and the actors find themselves in a real combat situation when they run foul of actual guerillas.

It’s a dopy premise, but the film sells it well. The film is distinguished by some good, funny gags, and solid presentation of the serious “Tropic Thunder” movie-within-a-movie. Stiller makes this fictitious film seem pretty real, and it’s here that the big budget pays off, with some impressive-looking battle footage. Also very genuine is Downey Jrs’ performance as the Crowe-esque Kirk Larazus, which is one of those comic performances that single-handedly makes a movie worth seeing. The character is evidence of the old maxim that the best comic performances are those that take the comic premise as a given and then perform it straight; Downey Jr has taken this absurd role – playing an Australian playing an African American playing a soldier – as a serious acting challenge, and he nails it.

Indeed, the film’s biggest problem is that the other actors aren’t really on the same level as Downey Jr: with the exception of Brandon T. Jackson (who does a hood job as Lazarus’ foil, rapper Alpa Chino) most are on a totally different wavelength. Of the lead actors, Stiller, interestingly, is the worst offender: his Tugg Speedman is a sketch-comedy level caricature that seems particularly jarring opposite Downey Jr’s performance. This is evident right from the start, when there are a series of fake trailers for the movies in which the fictitious actors are starring: Stillers’ (for a disaster / action movie series called Scorcher) is funny, but its clearly intended as a joke, which actually ruins the whole effect because the other trailers could almost pass as real. Stiller has shown elsewhere that he can do an over-the-top but still kind of uncanny impression of Bruce Willis (check it out here), so it’s surprising that his performance feels so unfocussed, and disappointing that it cuts against the realism that he establishes in his direction.

Even stranger again, though, is Tom Cruise’s supporting role as Les Grossman, the head of the studio financing the production. To say Cruise cuts against his star persona would be an understatement. The role reminded me of Mike Myers’ turn as Goldmember in the third Austin Powers film. Like that character, Grossman is a bizarre, grotesque figure achieved through heavy prosthetics and featuring strange speech patterns and despicably eccentric behaviour. And like Goldmember, Grossman is not really recognisable as a caricature of any particular personality type: it’s a character with no obvious reference point, and not even much internal consistency. Grossman’s scenes are sort of amusing, but the point of the joke seems mainly to be to see just how extreme and silly Stiller can convince Cruise to go. I’ve heard people say that this film might be something of a redemption for Cruise in the yes of the public: I’m not so sure. In its own way, Grossman’s concluding dance sequence is as off-putting as Cruise’s jumping on Oprah’s couch.