Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller, 2008)
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Excerpt:
Hollywood comedy isn't exactly doing well when the most commercially successful is a Disney pirate franchise and the most critically praised are the tepid, safe-as-houses fantasies of Judd Apatow ("40 Year Old Virgin;" "Knocked Up"). Hats off to Ben Stiller then, for making what easily zooms to the head of the mainstream class as the funniest American-made movie of the year (I know I know, year's not over yet--but these are the "ber" months, when solemn fare hopeful of winning The Annual Golden Doorstop are being released For Your Consideration). In a time when people are craving gigantic CGI effects or digital animation or pictures catering to the so-called sensitive side of fortysomething slackers, Stiller still knows the apparently lost art of going for the jugular, at least when it comes to that ridiculous, self-centered, wholly overpaid activity we know of as moviemaking.
"Tropic Thunder"--about a group of filmmakers who lose themselves in the jungle, then encounter a band of real-life, fully armed heroin growers--peaks early, which may or may not be unfortunate; truth to tell, nowadays you can't expect a sense of control and timing from directors. You can't, for example, expect the kind of perfectly calibrated sense of mounting hilarity Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin used to orchestrate with easy mastery, from titter to yowl to belly laugh to boffo; you can't expect (unlike with Keaton) a distinctive visual style, much less an eye for beauty, in today's comedies. At most you're thankful for the occasional belly laugh, and here you get it when star and actor wannabe Tugg Speedman (Stiller) uses his outstretched tongue to catch the drippings off of movie director Damien Cockburn's (Steve Coogan) severed head (long story). People will squirm in their seats; others will howl (or at least chortle) with glee; suffice to say, the image is a declaration of principles of sorts: it's an announcement to the general public that this will not be a safe movie, it will not for the most part play nice.
