Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #242 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-01-26
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 102 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
It's not really a knock to say that nothing in Tropic Thunder is funnier than its first five minutes, so sly that--especially for people watching in theaters--you don't realise right away they are the opening minutes of the movie. This outrageous comedy begins with a series of fake previews, each introducing one of the main characters in the film-proper (not that there's anything proper about this film) and each bearing the familiar logo of a different motion picture studio: Universal, DreamWorks SKG, et al. Such playing fast and loose with corporate talismans verges on sacrilege, but it's an index of how much le tout Tinseltown endorses the movie as a demented valentine to itself. The premise is that the cast of a would-be "Son of Rambo" movie shooting in some Southeast Asian jungle get into a real shooting war with drug-smuggling montagnards. Don't ask--though the movie does have an answer--why such highly paid, usually ultra-pampered personnel as superhero Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), Mozart of fart comedy Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), hip-hop artist Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), and five-time Oscar-winner Kirk Lazarus from Aus-try-leeah (Robert Downey Jr.) should be running through the jungle unattended and very vulnerable. It matters only that the real-life cast has a high time kidding their own profession and flexing their comedic muscles. Bonus points go to Stiller for co-writing the script (with Justin Theroux) and directing, and to Downey, brilliant as a white actor surgically turned black actor for his role and utterly committed to staying in character no matter what ("I don't drop character till I done the DVD commentary"). Be warned: The movie, too, is committed--to being an equal-opportunity offender. Its political incorrectness extends not only to Lazarus's black-like-me posturing but also Speedman's recent, Sean Penn–style Oscar bid playing a cognitively challenged farmboy--or, in Lazarus's deathless phrase, "going the full retard." Others in the cast include Steve Coogan as a director out of his depth, Nick Nolte as the Viet-vet novelist whose book inspired the film-within-the-film, Matthew McConaughey as Speedman's sun-blissed agent back home, and Tom Cruise--bald, fat-suited, and profane--as an epically repulsive studio head. Two hours running time is a mite excessive, but otherwise, what's not to like? --Richard T. Jameson

Synopsis
When box office champ Ben Stiller's comedic performances aren't a variation on a soft-spoken, put-upon everyman with an eventual fuse, he's usually playing a full-blown absurdist monster with an apoplectic Napoleon complex. These bizarre creations usually adorn films in which the funnyman provides the supporting work (DODGEBALL, HEAVYWEIGHTS), but, whenever he's directing, he's free to build an entire filmic universe around his asinine, ludicrously funny, culture-skewering characters and premises. His ZOOLANDER (2001) bit at the entertainment industry with silly abandon, but Stiller has firmly set TROPIC THUNDER within the realm of sophisticated Hollywood satire. In it, a desperate director named Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) trying to make a Vietnam war movie drops his pampered actors into the heart of the jungle. Cockburn's stars include Stiller as an action hero who's starting to make bad career choices, Jack Black as an insecure low-brow comedy star going through heroin withdrawals, and Robert Downey Jr. as an Australian Oscar winner so lost in his 'craft' he underwent a procedure to become black for his role. In the jungle, they remain under the delusion that they are still being filmed even after they encounter a dangerous gang of drug lords. The film's basic premise has popped up several times since Hollywood's 1970s golden age in films such as THREE AMIGOS! and GALAXY QUEST. Where those films simply blanketed a classic Overconfident Bumbling Idiot comedy showcase with a pop culture lexicon, however, TROPIC THUNDER could have only been made, as on-the-nose at is, by people who have been working in the Hollywood system for years, making cutting observations along the way. Simply put, this raucous satire knows big-budget filmmaking, the delusional narcissism of actors, and even the good points of those actors--perhaps why they're celebrated--like the back of its hand.

Customer Reviews

Average movie with great performance by Robert Downey Jr
Expect less and you'll get more. This is a daft spoof of hollywood and war movies with a fairly thin and at times threadbare plot (think Three Amigos meets Apocalypse Now). However I enjoyed it a lot mostly due to a funny performance from Robert Downey Jr and some great one liners. Strangely the weakest member of the cast for me was Jack Black, and I would have expected him to shine in this. Tom Cruise's little star turn is fun to watch. One to watch with some mates.

All sizzle and no sausage...
'A' for effort all round (and for casting, set-dressing, makeup, production values and generally conspicuous spending), it's just a shame that furious mugging, yelling and chewing up the scenery maketh not a great comedy. For that you need jokes and it seems like someone forgot to bring those. First five minutes of mock trailers are pretty funny, admittedly, but once into the film proper I barely smirked for the next hour and it didn't get a lot better thereafter. Shame, because I really liked the concept (though it's not so very unlike Galaxy Quest which, by contrast, saved on the production spend but really delivered on the script) and god knows the acting profession can take any amount of kicking. I was ready to go with it, but it didn't happen. Another damp squib.

A good if not great comedy
As with many films recently, was totally unsure how this would live up to all the recent hype. The general answer in my opinion was `not too badly'. The concept itself was new, refreshing and I like the fact that Hollywood was able to laugh at itself, not too dissimilar to the recent Churchill movie. For me, it started quite slowly after the excellent trailers (which were especially harsh at the movie business!) however half way through the movie the pace had quickened and it flowed nicely. With some excellent cameos and performances I thought this was pretty good, however not quite up to what I was expecting from all the hype, maybe film insiders find it funnier as it's sending up their business from the special effects guys right up to the top. Unlike many comedies recently I did find myself laughing out loud on a couple of occasions, however not enough to make it a 5 star movie I am afraid to say.