“I'm the dude playin' the dude, disguised as another dude!”

So The Silence of the Lambs was some heavy, well made and deeply disturbing cinema. Let’s wash that out with some comedic brain bleach. To that end, here’s 2008’s Tropic Thunder, written by Ben Stiller, directed by Ben Stiller & starring Ben Stiller.

Plot
So we start with a few fake ads and commercials featuring the characters of the film before getting into the plot. This is a movie about making movies, and the movie in question is an astronomically big budgeted Vietnam War movie “based on a true story” and starring three of the most egotistical and temperamental figures in Hollywood. The movie is over-budget and woefully behind schedule, and the producer gives the greenhorn director an ultimatum; get the movie back on track or he’s fired. The writer of the novel that the movie-within-the-actual-movie is based on (man, this is getting meta) suggests taking the actors off the grid into the jungle for some guerrilla-style filmmaking, at which point everything goes to hell when they enter the territory of a drug cartel called the Flaming Dragon and hilarity ensues.

Characters
Damien Cockburn: Steve Coogan is the hapless director who is in way over his head and unable to get his actors under control. He does a good job of the role, though there’s not much to it.

Kirk Lazarus: Robert Downey Jr. blows the movie away with his portrayal of a belligerent Australian method actor who undergoes a skin darkening procedure in order to play the movie squad’s black sergeant, “Lincoln Osiris” and refuses to break character. Far and away the movie’s badass.

Jeff Portnoy: Jack Black plays a boisterous comedian famous for lowbrow comedies that are pretty clearly based on Eddie Murphy’s Nutty Professor films. He’s got a serious drug problem too.

Tugg Speedman: Ben Stiller plays a largely washed up action star who’s Scorcher films aren’t making the money they used to. He took the lead role in the shameless Oscar-fodder film Simple Jack which bombed because he went “full retard” for the part and this role is acknowledged as pretty much a last gasp attempt at saving his career.

Alpa Chino: Brandon T. Jackson plays a popular and highly commercial rapper famous for shilling products like “Booty Sweat” energy drink who is trying to branch out dramatically to prove he has range. Naturally, he’s not particularly fond of Lazarus playing a very over-the-top black man, but he’s also got some surprises.

Kevin Sandusky: Jay Baruchel plays a really young character actor who’s trying to get a big break in the business. As such, he’s more or less ignored by the rest of the cast, but also happens to have been the only one to attend the cast boot camp and has some idea of what he’s doing. Easily the most level-headed character in the film.

John “Four-Leaf” Tayback: Nick Nolte plays a full-blown crazy man and the author of the book that the film is based on. His hands were blown off during the war, so he has to use hooks, but there’s a lot more going on with him than he lets on.

Cody: Danny McBride plays the pyrotechnics chief for the movie, a boorish, crass pyromaniac who loves making stuff go boom. And boom stuff goes in this movie.

Rick Peck: Matthew McConaughey plays Tugg’s agent who’s been with him for years. Mostly, he’s concerned with getting Tugg a TiVo that was promised in the contract.

Les Grossman: Tom Cruise in a surprisingly entertaining glorified cameo as the executive producer of the film. Grossman is a foul-mouthed, amoral crazy pants who is funding the movie and steals the show when he’s on screen. If he & Downey Jr. were on the screen at the same time, I fear the television would magically transform into a ham and cheese sandwich fit for the gods.

Visuals/Effects
Ben Stiller directed with John Toll as director of photography. The film looks very, very good and when it goes into action-movie mode, stuff blows up real good while still remaining wickedly funny. The pacing of the film is also incredibly well done, with even the director’s cut moving along at a nice breezy pace.

Writing
Screenwriters Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux & Etan Cohen have a lot of characters to juggle, and the manage to do so well. Everybody important goes through some kind of arc and the dialogue is both incredibly well written and incredibly profane, so there’s not much I can quote here. Suffice it to say, the movie throws a lot at you, and it is very, very funny. Even the film’s point of controversy, the abundant usage of the word “retard” in discussion of the mentally handicapped is actually rather well handled, with the point within the movie being about Hollywood’s exploitation of such disabilities in order to create maudlin Oscar Bait tearjerkers.

Sound
Original Music by Theodore Shapiro, but that gets overshadowed by the excellent and appropriately placed licensed music, like Quiet Riot, M.C. Hammer, The Temptations, The Mooney Suzuki, The Crystal Method, Steppenwolf and others.

Conclusion
Not a whole lot to say other than I love the hell out of Tropic Thunder. It’s a smart, genre savvy skewering/tribute to big budget action movies that is one really successful action comedy. Totally recommended.

“I will shoot you. And I know robot karate!”

Leaving aside monstrously budgeted franchises filled with *BOOSH* and/or *KA-KOW!* we turn to indie film sensibilities, where acoustic guitars and general quirkiness reign supreme. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, mind you, its just another set of storytelling clichés that get used for good or for ill.

This intro kind of sucks, so let’s just get right into Michel Gondry’s 2008 film, Be Kind Rewind.

Plot
So, we’re in Passaic, New Jersey and a guy named Mike works in a failing video store that is still stocked only with VHS tapes. The store is in danger of closing, and our hero doesn’t want to let that happen since he’s convinced that the building was the birthplace of Jazz pianist Fats Waller (he’s totally wrong about this which is kind of the point, but whatever, it’s motivation enough). When his boss leaves town for a few days, he’s put in charge of the store. At the same time, his quirky sidekick best friend Jerry, who lives in a trailer in a junkyard next to some power lines from a power plant, tries to sabotage the plant one night and gets zapped. Instead of dying horribly, he gets magnetized and the next time he enters the video store *BAM* every tape gets wiped. In a desperate move, Mike & Jerry decide to film new versions of those films themselves. Surprisingly, these “Sweded” films (under the pretense that they were imported from Sweden) become a local hit and our two heroes become smalltime filmmakers until they get the attention of the big, bad film industry because of the questionable legality of these sweded films. Also, some developers want to come in and tear down the old shop to put up condos or something.

Characters
Mike: Mos Def plays our meek, slightly gullible (well, he IS convinced that Fats Waller was born in New Jersey) hero, and he’s a likable enough guy. He’s also the responsible one of the duo, though Jerry tends to walk over him when he gets over-excited.

Jerry Gerber: Jack Black doesn’t constantly play the standard “over-the-top Jack Black” character in this one. Sure, he’s still got a lot of moments where he hams it up royally and mugs for the camera, but most of those are done in the Sweded films. Jerry is a character that’s half funny and half annoying, since he’s a largely selfish guy with little regard for all the crap he’s putting Mike through and starts to get a swollen head when their bootlegs become a hit. On the other hand, he’s pretty damn funny in the Sweded films, which I guess makes him the badass of the movie.

Elroy Fletcher: Danny Glover (which makes this five Danny Glover movies in the span of three weeks) plays the owner of the store who’s trying to come to grips with modern technology pushing his business under (well, he does own a store renting VHS tapes in 2008, so saying he’s behind the times is an understatement). He goes on “vacation” for the purposes of doing research on successful video stores and their tricks, like DVDs. He does a good job with the character.

Alma: Melonie Diaz plays an employee of a nearby cleaners that gets drawn into the Sweded films since the guys realize they need a female character from time to time.

Miss Falewicz: Mia Farrow in a small role as a woman who rents Ghostbusters only to find out the tape’s blank. This starts the whole ball rolling.

Sigourney Weaver also shows up in a small but important cameo.

Visuals/Effects
Directed by Michel Gondry (the Frenchman who directed the lauded Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and a number of music videos) and cinematography by Ellen Kuras. Gondry knows his way around a camera quite well and makes the urban decay of New Jersey somewhat heroic. It’s hard to describe, but his visual style really celebrates things that are quirky and off-center. Best example: The Sweded films themselves, which are easily the best parts of the movie. Simply, its two guys with a VHS camera using makeshift props, cruddy special effects and costumes and more-or-less improvising the thing. They start with Ghostbusters and move on to stuff like The Lion King, Robocop, Driving Miss Daisy and so on. This culminates in documentary shot by Mike & Jerry about the life of Fats Waller done in the same Sweded guerrilla style, and you know what, it’s actually quite impressive.

Writing
Written by Michel Gondry, the film starts out with a quirky, slightly sci-fi premise which isn’t rare in indie films, but once you strip away the initial premise, this is a movie about making movies and the MacGyver-like ingenuity that goes along with not having a budget. Except Gondry has a budget and…well, it’s a metaphor, okay? The emphasis on Fats Waller is interesting too. Thematically, he’s a mostly forgotten musician who was huge in his lifetime, and that whole faded glory aspect ties in nicely with, you know, New Jersey (I’m not being facetious here, I’m from Cleveland, Ohio, so I’m a little familiar with urban decay).

Sound
Original music by Jean-Michel Bernard and a soundtrack that features Booker T & the MG’s, The Gap Band and naturally Fats Waller.

Conclusion
Be Kind Rewind certainly has that “indie movie quirk” hovering over it, but here it works in the film’s favor. Its certainly not perfect (the pacing in the beginning could be quicker) but overall, it’s a warm, satisfying love letter to the movie making spirit. So…recommended, just not enthusiastically.



And speaking of Sweded...