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United States, United Kingdom, Germany · 2008
Rated R · 1h 47m
Director Ben Stiller
Starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Cruise
Genre Action, Comedy, Adventure, War
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Vietnam veteran 'Four Leaf' Tayback's memoir, Tropic Thunder, is being made into a film, but Director Damien Cockburn can’t control the cast of prima donnas. Behind schedule and over budget, Cockburn is ordered by a studio executive to get filming back on track, or risk its cancellation. On Tayback's advice, Cockburn drops the actors into the middle of the jungle to film the remaining scenes but, unbeknownst to the actors and production, the group have been dropped in the middle of the Golden Triangle, the home of heroin-producing gangs.
From Downey Jr.'s purposely racist embodiment of African-American anachronisms to Black's scatological humor, everything in Tropic Thunder qualifies as satire, not spoof. It's an important distinction. Pauline Kael once noted that "unlike satire, spoofing has no serious objectives; it doesn't attack anything that anyone could take seriously; it has no cleansing power."
Tropic Thunder is the funniest movie of the summer--so funny, in fact, that you start laughing before the film itself has begun.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
All over the map, but it's worth enduring the botched gags, formula plotting, and even the racism to marvel at the genius of Robert Downey Jr.
The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt
Stiller manages his movie nicely so that all actors get their share of the comic spotlight. Seldom does an ensemble comedy not contain a single weak character or performance as does this one.
Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman
If you wait through the credits, you get one last joke in the fine print: The actors shot the whole movie in Hawaii, on the fabulously lush island of Kauai. So while they were shooting a story about indulged prima donnas, they were working themselves in one of the most tourist-friendly spots on Earth. You've gotta smile at that.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips
In the end Tropic Thunder is an expensive goof about an expensive goof, and the results are very impressive and fancy-looking.
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
A knockout of a comedy that keeps you laughing constantly. It's also killer smart, lacing combustible action with explosive gags.
Those opening trailers are hilarious and devastatingly acute, but the rest of Stiller's film could be more a deconstruction of comedy than a display of it. The brain gets the joke; the ribs are untickled.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
When it's all over, you'll probably have the fondest memories of Robert Downey Jr.'s work. It's been a good year for him, this one coming after "Iron Man." He's back, big time.
Apart from startling, out-there comic turns by Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise, however, the antics here are pretty thin, redundant and one-note.
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In the beginning...