Tropic Thunder, round 2.

"The Ben Stiller action-film parody Tropic Thunder is all over the map, but it's worth enduring the botched gags, formula plotting, and even the racism to marvel at the genius of Robert Downey Jr," writes New York's David Edelstein. "As much as Downey sends up the Shafts and Superflys, he respects the beauty and weight and potency of the archetype. He drops his voice an octave (at least) and what comes out is gorgeous. He really does make a damn fine Negro."

"Overall and maybe inevitably, Tropic Thunder is uneven, and ultimately it's disposable, but what smug fun there is to be had from the notion that the whole overblown enterprise might be justified by this one formerly uninsurable actor's performance alone," agrees Jonathan Kiefer.

Updated through 8/18.

"Anyone walking into Tropic Thunder looking to be offended by Downey's minstrel turn will soon find that the movie is two steps ahead," writes Slate's Dana Stevens. "His role is no one-note, let's-shock-the-audience race joke - it's a densely layered little study of American racial anxiety."

"Downey transforms the cheap gag into a metacomedic coup," writes David Fear in Time Out New York: "He plays a ridiculously extreme thespian with an equally po-faced intensity. Watching Lazarus preach against the perils of going 'full retard' to win awards or bemoan how the n-word has held 'his people' down with such misguided gravitas, you can't help but admire Downey's dynamic act of comic jujitsu."

"What's most notable about the film's use of blackface is how much softer it is compared with the rather more vulgar and far less loving exploitation of what you might call Jewface," notes Manohla Dargis. "Hands down the most noxious character in Tropic Thunder is Les Grossman, the producer of the movie-within-a-movie, who's played by an almost unrecognizable Tom Cruise under a thick scum of makeup and latex. Heavily and heavy-handedly coded as Jewish, the character is murderous, repellent and fascinating, a grotesque from his swollen fingers to the heavy gold dollar sign nestled on his yeti-furred chest. At one time Mr Stiller wanted to adapt Budd Schulberg's brutal satire about a Hollywood hustler, What Makes Sammy Run?, to the screen, a long dormant and now perhaps lost project that haunts this otherwise safe film like a wrathful ghost."

Also in the New York Times, Dave Itzkoff talks with the movie's makers.

"A parody of war movies and a pinprick in the helium balloon of Hollywood egos, Tropic Thunder caps a hectic summer of action films and star-driven comedies and is designed as a blend and a semiloving critique of both genres," writes Richard Corliss in Time. "The picture is savvy to the max, maybe to excess; but Stiller, who also directed and co-wrote the movie, surely figures that in the blogosphere age, no film can be too inside - it's where everyone is."

"Over the years, a few genuine boundary-shattering comedies have managed to sneak out of the major studios: Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles was one, Borat another," notes the LA Weekly's Scott Foundas. "But more often than not, the most gleefully irreverent movies come from devil-may-care mavericks working on the margins of independent cinema - movies like John Waters's shoestring, shit-eating classic Pink Flamingos, or even, more to the point, the early (and largely forgotten) films of Downey's own father, Robert Downey Sr, whose 1969 Putney Swope imagined what might happen if a prominent Madison Avenue advertising firm were suddenly overtaken by militant blacks. Those movies had - and continue to have - more sting than anything in Tropic Thunder, which is ultimately just another movie about moviemaking, better than some (David Mamet's State and Main comes to mind), not as good as others (The Player, S.O.B.), occasionally willing to bite the hand that feeds it but more often content to merely teethe."

"Tropic Thunder is ridiculous and deeply enjoyable, but it also flashes a mercilessly polished mirror at the 'prestige' products that the movie business so glibly feeds us in order to reflect glory back on itself," writes Stephanie Zacharek at Salon. "The picture also questions the way we congratulate ourselves for our appreciation of serious pictures and dedicated performances, as if, by applauding their quality, we might somehow be connected with some greater good. Movies can elevate us, helping us locate the best, most generous parts of ourselves. But that doesn't diminish the fact - as Tropic Thunder so painfully reminds us - that 'quality' movies are sometimes made by absolute assholes."

For Godfrey Cheshire, writing in the Independent Weekly, this is "easily the funniest movie I've seen this year, a riotous high-octane side-splitter that delivers more laughs than a dozen standard studio comedies."

"If only for making Tom Cruise and Matthew McConaughey funny for the first time since 1994 or so, Tropic Thunder would already qualify as an impressive comedic achievement," writes Alonso Duralde for MSNBC. "But actor-director Ben Stiller's satire of pampered Hollywood actors and out-of-control action epics mines humor from a wide variety of sources, resulting in a film that delivers wall-to-wall laughs even if, by the time it's all over, you realize you don't give a tinker's damn about anyone on screen." Also, a look back at blackface.

"Hollywood's easy pickings, and making fun of it is what insiders do when they've emptied their arsenal," writes Robert Wilonsky in the Voice. "Tropic Thunder - which drops a bunch of actors into the wilds of Southeast Asia and shouts 'Action!' - doesn't stray far from convention, save for a little added gore, firepower, and star power worthy of its nearly $100 million budget."

"It's the kind of summer comedy that rolls in, makes a lot of people laugh and rolls on to video," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "It's been a good summer for that; look at Pineapple Express."

Michael Joshua Rowin picks it up from there in the L Magazine, noting that both films "prove the collegiate (and post-) white male hath asked and received - not one but two action movie satires featuring a who's who of comic dude icons (Stiller, Jack Black, Seth Rogen) blowing stuff up, imitating black guys and yelling 'Dude!' to the point of psychosis. Yes, the unsurprisingly similar films (they also share a couple of supporting actors, faceless gangs of Asian drug lords and a virtual void of female roles) make for a telling pair of white guy fantasies - though one too frequently misunderstands its genre and renders the fantasy an incoherent muddle, while the other's self-deprecating humor has the fantasy itself become the butt of the joke."

Steven Boone in the SpoutBlog: "In a shot mournfully photographed by John Toll, [Nick] Nolte stares out at the jungle mists from a mountain perch and answers a query about a weapon with, 'I don't know what it's called, but I know the sound that it makes when it takes a man's life.' It's like, out of nowhere, ten seconds of Malick or Herzog."

"Stiller's performance is easily the weakest element of Tropic Thunder," finds Tasha Robinson at the AV Club. "Like his Zoolander character, he only has a handful of exaggerated expressions, and he cycles through them on cue. But it's easy to forgive him, given how thoroughly enjoyable Tropic Thunder is on virtually every other count."

The Stranger's Andrew Wright finds it "offers a number of genuine laughs between the self-congratulatory waves. It's just good enough to make you wish it were better."

"Ben Stiller used to be unafraid of pointed mockery, but nowadays he pulls his punches," argues Jeremiah Kipp in Slant. "His new movie, Tropic Thunder, just isn't funny."

But for the Austin Chronicle's Marjorie Baumgarten, "Stiller's barbs have not been this sharply pointed since his early-90s TV show."

Armond White in the New York Press: "Look past Tropic Thunders misleading marketing campaign, and it's a movie about something director Ben Stiller well understands: the plight, insecurity and vanity of actors."

As Emiliano de Pablos reports for Variety, Stiller and Downey Jr will be presenting Tropic Thunder at the San Sebastian Film Festival (September 18 through 28).

Online viewing tips. Matt Prigge lists "Six Films Featuring Blackface" in the Philadelphia Weekly.

Earlier: Round 1 and Glenn Kenny.

Updates, 8/15: "More exhausting than funny, though it is often both, Ben Stiller's latest excoriation of ego wears you down with its smothering, pop-savvy cynicism. It's a movie with a lot of half-considered, riffed opinions about everything from the shamelessness of film actors to the international heroin trade," writes Justin Stewart at Stop Smiling. "The aim of its intent is regularly dead-on, but the execution is generally a mess... You walk out not having seen a movie — it never materializes."

The New Republic's Christopher Orr notes that "Downey is not acting in blackface (except in the literal sense); he's playing a character who is acting in blackface. Anyone who fails to grasp this distinction should probably also conclude that playing Archie Bunker made Carroll O'Connor a racist." Further praise for supporting players follows, "Which brings us to Tom Cruise. Though his performance as tyrannical studio boss Les Grossman may not rise to some of the superlatives being tossed its way, it is eye-opening. Cruise is one of the more humor-phobic actors of his generation - his last major role in a straight comedy was in Risky Business, 25 years ago - but his profane, bullying Grossman is a delight. For years now, onscreen and off, Cruise has seemed like a bottle of barely contained crazy; now we know what happens when the cork comes out."

"It might be a stretch to compare Tropic Thunder's profane, often graphically gross humor to Wilder's far subtler noir stylings in Sunset Boulevard, or the nihilistic portrait of coldblooded ambition in The Player," concedes Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post. "But in its own sophomoric, stupid-smart way, Stiller's portrayal of ego, pomposity and macho swagger manages to be just as on-point and subversive."

Updates, 8/16: "After four directorial efforts, Stiller has yet to make a wholly satisfying picture," writes Elbert Ventura in Reverse Shot. "To be sure, there have been glimmers of intelligence and inspiration in his past films: the specter of derangement in The Cable Guy, the hilarious send-ups of celeb culture in Zoolander. (Reality Bites, his first movie, just plain bit.) But funny or incisive they may be in parts, not one can be called an unqualified success. Nor can his latest film, Tropic Thunder. Entertaining enough and yet fatally compromised, it's Stiller's best movie, for whatever that's worth—and probably the starkest reminder of the distance between his early promise and his current careerist track."

"On the one hand, plenty of this movie is laugh-out-loud funny in a gleefully tasteless way," writes Paul Matwychuk. "And yet, at the same time, there's something oppressive about this movie, which wants to be a scathing satire about Hollywood excess at the same time that it wants to impress you with its own expensiveness."

"Tropic Thunder was built on a mountain of increasingly irreverent R-rated cinema that takes in 30 years' worth of broken taboos and box-office records," writes Dave Itzkoff in the New York Times, introducing a quick history lesson: "For all the social conventions transgressed in the 1960s and 70s - in the standup routines of Lenny Bruce, George Carlin and Richard Pryor, for example - the granddaddies of the gross-out genre didn't arrive in movie theaters until the late 70s."

Updates, 8/17: The Los Angeles Times' Patrick Goldstein: "My colleague John Horn has a good story in our paper today about how the nation's film critics have come to the defense of Tropic Thunder, Ben Stiller's new Hollywood satire, which has been under attack from various advocacy groups of its frequent use of the word 'retard.'"

Why hasn't Tropic Thunder done better at the box office? Robert Cashill has a few ideas - and then: "The main reason, I think, is that movies (and TV shows) about moviemaking are toxic." Similarly, David Poland.

Update, 8/18: "Tropic Thunder is an uneven movie, but it's one of those comedies that, if its best parts work for you, you're liable to forgive it its dead patches because you're not likely to ever see anything quite like its best parts again," writes Phil Nugent, and towards the end: "Downey rocked the house in Iron Man; he managed to be a superb comic-book hero while keeping himself amused by taking jabs at his own bad-boy image, and he proved that he could, as they say in the boardrooms, carry a movie and open it big. It showed why he's a star. Tropic Thunder shows why he's a national treasure."

"After the dazzle of the early scenes, something droops and flags in Tropic Thunder," writes the New Yorker's Anthony Lane. "As a jab at the movie business, Tropic Thunder is flailing and unfocussed, hardly in the league of The Player, and if you want an exposé of the combat movie, strewn with compromise and creative sacrifice, watch Hearts of Darkness (1991), about the making of Apocalypse Now. The Stiller of Dodgeball left the genre of the sports melodrama in tatters, but we can safely assume that the war film, after this assault, will live to fight another day."

Posted by dwhudson at August 14, 2008 12:25 PM