Toxic Thunder

The state of modern comedy can be best seen in the very bloated schizophrenic foul-fest called Tropic Thunder. Okay, let me list each adjective and define:

1. BLOATED - Why is every comedy today inflated with minute after minute of time spent with obnoxious hateful "funny" characters? I realize a lot of the dvd versions of these Ben Stiller and Judd Apatow films are filled with added SPECIAL scenes not seen in theaters, but even before that Frankenstein stitching of extra funny bones, these films are still too long for fanny endurance in a cinema seat. Epic comedies are dead, people, and even they, in their prime in the 1960s, were stretching the limit. There is a reason they died. Comedy is best served on a small plate and eaten while it's still hot. A big serving becomes cold fast and unappetizing.

2. SCHIZOPHRENIC - Tropic Thunder's director, the truly unappealing Ben Stiller, wants this to be a comedy, right? Why then is it filmed like an action movie? Why the gritty cinematography best suited for Rambo or Oliver Stone? Why the portentous sound track? Why the CGI and slow motion explosions that want us to revel in the BOOM and the BANG? The idea of this film is that we are watching a fake war film. Why continue the look and sound after we know it is a comedy?

3. FOULFEST - I am no prude, but is constant swearing and tirades on oral sex truly funny? Shock comedy, yes. It hits you in the face and you react with a nervous laugh. But comedy today slams you in the face over and over again with a full fist of "fucks" and then rabbit punches you with more verbal vulgarity and this is supposed to funny. I swear, I truly believe that I could hire a bunch of Junior High School students and tell them to write a script and provide top grade technical equipment and they could produce a Summer Comedy Hit. Kids find swearing and sex jokes and over the top phony violence funny. Aren't we supposed to grow up? In a discussion with a co-worker, I was told that if Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton or W.C. Fields were allowed to say "fuck" or flash their posterior or fart, well, they would have done so. Why do I find that hard to believe? Stiller should look at his own parents. Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller based their comedy on "character" and verbal wordplay.

Tropic Thunder is supposed to be the funny epic comedy of a group of actors who are making an action war film and then are, accidentally, thrown into a real dangerous jungle situation involving drug smugglers. Only one of the actors still thinks he is in a film and that idiot is played by Ben Stiller who always plays an idiot or unlikable jerk. Idiots and unlikable jerks have always been comedy fodder. We have seen them as the protagonists of many comedy films. But we eventually like them and they change during the plot of the story. Stiller never does; he's always a humiliated asshole to the end. I have a natural aversion to Stiller. He is hard to look at; he resembles a cross between a monkey and Tom Cruise. (more on Tom Cruise in a minute!) Stiller is, also, the screenwriter and director and his idea is to make fun of actors and Hollywood and the people who make these type of big action films. The problem is that Stiller and his fellow co-stars, Jack Black (oh, is he insufferable in his screaming and heroin withdrawal ramblings), Matthew McConaughey and Tom Cruise are part of the very thing they are trying to make fun of; they themselves continue to make the same cliche, soulless, unfunny and/or dramatic action crap they aspire in this film to deride. So ... it doesn't work. It stinks as much as the dung they force upon the public every year. It is completely unbelievable as satire. I can believe Robert Altman or Blake Edwards when they poke fun at Hollywood, because I see them as people who dislike or have been burned by that environment ... not Ben Stiller running around with his Hollywood Gym muscled arms.

The only saving grace of this film is Robert Downey Jr. as an actor who so involves himself in his parts that he literally "becomes" what he is playing. In this case, he is playing a black man in the fake film in the film. He is so believable in this role that I actually forgot who he was Robert Downey Jr. He actual character is a blond haired Australian actor who he, also, plays flawlessly. Another actor who tries to be someone we don't associate with his usual roles is Tom Cruise. Cruise plays a vulgar fat Hollywood executive. He is covered in latex, a bald cap, wears tinted glasses and has body hair erupting from his unbuttoned shirt. The difference with Cruise is that we know right away that IT IS CRUISE. He can't act. He can't do a character. The smile, the smirk, the laugh is still there; no matter the make-up or the excessive vulgar language it is still empty old Tom Cruise trying to be funny. The fact that Stiller is now "buddies" with Cruise (a person he used to make fun of on his short lived TV show) and is planning a film, according to E! Online, starring this very Len Grossman character, is proof that Stiller hasn't a clue to what is funny. Can you imagine 90 minutes of ... oh, wait ... I mean, TWO HOURS or MORE of Cruise's bombastic foul Hollywood executive dancing to rap music and saying shit and fuck and dick over and over again? Wait, did I write the word "dick"? I did!! Are you laughing?