In Search of a Midnight Kiss, Tropic Thunder
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
Directed by Alex Holdridge
B-
Reviewed by Matt Prigge
Opens Fri., Aug. 15
Does the rest of the planet actually find insider Hollywood humor as gut-busting as those inside Hollywood? With Tropic Thunder, Ben Stiller and friends bet a $100 million war comedy that they do.
Stiller's latest vaguely awesome-sounding but disappointing hop behind the lens opens with a mostly straight-faced parody of Platoon. But once it's revealed we're watching a film about the making of a war film the jokes are--nine times out of 10--culled from toiling in the belly of the beast that is La-La Land. Get this, plebeians: Agents are greedy. Actors are pampered, pretentious and/or drug-addicted. Execs' tempers tend to be as violent as their guts are colossal.
Oddly, Thunder falls prey to one of its favorite jabs--actorly egomania. What else could explain the reason the person with the most screentime is our writer-director? Stiller has amassed a vast ensemble of funnypersons, only to decide that none could possibly be as funny as he.
His mugshot hair returned, Nick Nolte plays the vet whose 'Nam memoirs are being cinematically desecrated. He's basically swept out of the movie early on, along with Steve Coogan and Pineapple Express movie-stealer Danny McBride. Treated slightly better are Jack Black, as a smack-addicted comic, and Robert Downey Jr., as a deadly serious thesp who's surgically darkened his skin to play the group's most prominent African-American.
The joke with the latter, as reiterated endlessly since the character was revealed months ago, is on insanely dedicated Method actors. (Like Downey, who reportedly stayed in character on the set.) But once you get the joke, there's not much to laugh at, despite RDJ giving it his all. (Ditto Brandon T. Jackson as the troop's aptly horrified actual person of color.)
Thunder pokes fun at Hollywood, but in a safe, acceptable, "hey, just kidding" way. Moreover, it often succumbs to SNL Syndrome, in which certain yuks--Stiller's evisceration of Oscar-baiting retard performances; Black in skivvies; an already spoiled "secret" appearance from a comeback-needing, couch-jumping, religious nutcase superstar--get trotted out endlessly over the film's two full hours. (There's also far too much white-guys-dancing-to-thug-rap humor.)
It's a shame--Thunder's red band trailer was at least as funny as Pineapple Express, and three times as crazy. Some movies ought to stay just trailers.
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