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Review: 'Tropic Thunder'

BY RAFER GUZMÁN | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

August 13, 2008

(3 1/2 Stars) (R)

PLOT Self-indulgent actors are thrown for a loop when their war movie turns unexpectedly real.

CAST Ben Stiller, Jack Black,

Robert Downey Jr., Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan

LENGTH 1:47

PLAYING AT Area theaters

BOTTOM LINE Gory, vulgar and wickedly funny. Easily the summer's best comedy.

Of all the offenses against good taste in the riotously funny "Tropic Thunder," the biggest outcry so far has come from advocates for the disabled. Halfway through the film, one actor - playing an actor - explains that Oscar voters prefer their on-screen simpletons to be secretly smart, as in "Rain Man" and "Forrest Gump." The lesson: "Never go full retard."

The joke is on Hollywood more than the disabled. "Tropic Thunder" saves its real savagery for self-involved actors, morally dubious agents, satanic studio execs and, indirectly, you, the gullible viewer who puts money in their pockets. "Tropic Thunder" delivers some truly smash-mouth humor - it's rated R for a reason - even if, in the end, everyone faces little worse than an affectionate noogie.

Ben Stiller, who directed and co-wrote (with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen), clearly knows his material. The stars of "Tropic Thunder" - that is, the war movie within the movie - will be familiar to anyone who has wasted a few minutes watching tabloid TV: Tugg Speedman (Stiller), a fading action hero; Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), a coke-addicted comedian; rapper-turned-actor Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson); and Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), a pompous method actor who undergoes cosmetic surgery to play a black role. What, no public outcry there?

Things go awry when the director (Steve Coogan) aims for realism by forcing his actors to fend for themselves in the jungles of Southeast Asia, where they're mistaken for actual U.S. operatives by local drug lords. Bullets fly, but the real victims are The Movies: Nearly everything from "Apocalypse Now" to "Mephisto" gets hoisted on a pike.

To say more would spoil the fun, but Tom Cruise's much-publicized turn as a cold-blooded, bald-headed studio mogul is worth the price of admission. If anyone should be protesting "Tropic Thunder," it's movie producers.