Cinemas - starting this week - 19/9/08

Sep 19 2008 by Michael Green, Chester Chronicle

Written and directed by Ben Stiller, Tropic Thunder sees a welcome return to form as Tugg Speedman, a struggling actor desperate to revive his career.

Speedman is cast as John “Four Leaf” Tayback in a big-budget adaptation of his Vietnam memoir. He is joined by comedian Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) and Oscar-winner Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr) on the set of the most expensive war movie of all time.

After being berated from studio head Les Grossman (Tom Cruise) for the film’s spiralling costs, frustrated director Cody Cockburn (Steve Coogan) conspires with the real-life Four Leaf (Nick Nolte) to scare the prima donna actors into delivering decent performances in an attempt to finish the movie before the studio pulls the plug.

The actors are given a scene list and told to use a map to make their way through the jungle to a helicopter. Cockburn explains they will be filmed “guerilla-style” using hidden cameras.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this goes spectacularly wrong, leaving the actors stranded in the jungle at the mercy of a vicious gang of heroin producers.

The concept behind Tropic Thunder – actors making a movie having to act their way out of a situation – has been done before with The Three Amigos, but Stiller, Black and Downey somehow carry it off and make it their own.

Downey in particular delivers an excellent performance as Australian Kirk Lazarus who took the extreme step of surgically altering his face to play an African American, his refusal to step out of character to the annoyance of a genuine black actor being one of the funniest aspects.

With a long list of cameos from Matthew McConaghey, Tom Cruise and Tobey Maguire, the film successfully manages to parody big-budget movie-making and the Hollywood stereotype without resorting to obscure in-jokes. After the disappointing roll-call of summer blockbusters this year, Tropic Thunder might just save the day.

STAR RATING: ****