3 out of 5

Director: Ben Stiller

It is very possible that in a few years I will give this movie five stars. But for now, in the average range does it sit – enjoyable popcorn fare, something I wouldn’t have minded seeing in a theater… but nothing new. Stiller has always been funniest to me in his self-written versions – his TV show, the shorts he’s done for MTV, Zoolander – as opposed to his Hollywood version, which is similar to his other roles, but inifinitely more put-upon and pathetic, the role that started with Something About Mary and continued through Meet the Parents and its ilk. Now Tropic Thunder gets massive points for its dedication: in sending up action movies, it ends up being an action movie, and also does its best to lay out a plot to support the story. But from there on everything started to fall sort of short of what I would have wanted. Jokes were funny, but rarely made me laugh out loud. The trump card – Robert Downey Jr. in black-face – is played for some of the expected jokes, but it gets pulled down by the fact that his character plays the intelligent straight man. Zoolander, for me, worked well because almost everything was over the top except for a few key characters to keep it grounded. Here though, it’s reversed, as though Stiller has been influenced by his Sad Sack roles: there are only a couple over-the-top characters and the rest are… fairly normal. This makes the spirit of the film slightly more mean-spirited which, I fear, is a direction comedy has taken over the years. The scene that sums it up is one in which the director of the in-movie film (Steve Coogan) gets punched. In a traditional comedy, the joke is in the pratfall after the punch, or the buildup to the punch. Here it is the punch, which is shown (thanks to CG) rather brutally, with blood flying. No pratfall. I enjoyed Tropic Thunder, but as compared to Zoolander, it’s an unfortunate reminder of the state of comedy.