Tropic Thunder (From The Northern Echo)

Tropic Thunder

1:51pm Friday 26th September 2008

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Tropic Thunder contains everything you want and expect from a Ben Stiller film. Admittedly, it’s not as funny as Dodgeball, but it does have a stronger storyline, including subplots and some of it even works on multiple levels.

If you don’t already know, Tropic Thunder is the “true story of the most expensive war movie ever made.” Following major filming setbacks, the director changes tactics, sending the actors deep into the jungles of South East Asia to film them using CCTV. Spotted by drug dealers, a series of skirmishes occur, many of them thought to be only theatrical battles by the heroes.

In the US, Tropic Thunder has caused controversy because of two key features; an Afro-American character is played by a white actor, and the repeated use of the word “retard”. On my opinion, these are pretty stupid details to cause a fuss about. Robert Downey Jr. is not a white man playing a black man, he is a white man playing a white man playing a black man, and the controversy was mentioned in the form of acted newsreader shots in the film itself. Any offence to sufferers of Down’s syndrome was considerably less than the jokes about gay people, which didn’t seem to cause a problem.

The acting talent is, on the whole, brilliant. In addition to the main cast of Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr., Steve Coogan, Tom Cruise and several others play minor roles. The only problem was that the main “villain” was played by a kid who wasn’t very good at acting.

This film doesn’t have everything, but you wouldn’t really expect it to. Instead, it’s a film that knows what it should include, and does them well. And there you go, I wrote this entire review without giving away any of the jokes.

4 Stars.

Jonny

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