Fun rumble in the jungle

Tropic Thunder (MA15+) 3½ stars National release FIRST there was Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola's troubled epic about the Vietnam War, and then there was Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, a documentary by his wife Eleanor Coppola in which she exposed the conflicts and traumas that went into making the film.

Tropic Thunder has fun at the expense of Francis Ford Coppola

Tropic Thunder (MA15+) 3½ stars National release FIRST there was Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola's troubled epic about the Vietnam War, and then there was Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, a documentary by his wife Eleanor Coppola in which she exposed the conflicts and traumas that went into making the film.

Now, for the benefit of those who remember those films (though it's more likely to be seen by young people who don't), comes Tropic Thunder, a big-budget comedy that has fun, in a very non-PC way, with both the Coppola films as well as Oliver Stone's Platoon and just about every other Vietnam War movie. It's the first film Ben Stiller has directed since Zoolander (2001), and in its frequently gross but generally funny way it's a lot better than its predecessor.

Comedies about Hollywood have in the past been enjoyed by film buffs and overlooked by the mass audience, but Tropic Thunder seems likely to break that mould. Movie enthusiasts will have a heap of fun with the plethora of insider jokes, but the film doesn't rely entirely on a knowledge (whether presumed or actual) of the behind-the-scenes machinations involved in making a big-budget epic.

Stiller, who wrote the film in collaboration with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, starts off with a quartet of faux trailers announcing coming films of such surpassing awfulness that I was convinced, at first, that they were genuine (one is about members of a family afflicted with flatulence, another is a futuristic action epic, another a tale of gay love between a couple of clerics).
These trailers introduce the stars of Tropic Thunder, a film being made supposedly on location in Vietnam and based on a book by Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), a Vietnam veteran who lost both hands in the conflict. Tugg Speedman (Stiller) has dropped from box-office heights after starring in
Simple Jack, a film about a mentally challenged character and an obvious parody of the embarrassing Sean Penn movie IAm Sam; Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) has hitherto specialised in comedies of the flatulent kind and is battling a severe drug habit; Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) is a hip-hop star turned actor; and Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) is a screen newcomer. Best of all is Aussie star Kirk Lazarus, a blond, blue-eyed Oscar-winning hunk (surely Russell Crowe was the model) who, for this film, is incongruously playing an African-American complete with crinkly black hair and shoe-polish complexion.

This character is played to the hilt by the always engaging Robert Downey Jr, and he almost steals the film single-handed.

The only reason he doesn't is that Tom Cruise, of all people, does. Cruise plays Les Grossman, a balding (but otherwise extremely hirsute) Hollywood mogul with the morals of an alley cat and a refined sense of his own importance; a scene in which he devilishly offers Tugg's vacillating agent (Matthew McConaughey) heaps of money and a private jet if he'll turn a blind eye to his client's death in the Vietnamese jungles is wholly memorable.

Hilarious too is Steve Coogan as Damien Cockburn, the British director of this extravaganza, who finds himself seriously out of his depth with the logistics of a Hollywood film for which explosions every few minutes are mandatory. His sudden departure from the location leaves the five actors on their own to perform in front of hidden cameras (a manifestly absurd idea that is somehow amusing) and to battle with some very odd members of a jungle-based drug cartel.

You could justifiably accuse Tropic Thunder of being overblown (in every sense of the word) and often silly rather than funny; you could also accuse it of being in bad taste, but bad taste is something Stiller embraces with glee. You may also get a bit sick of Jack Black's monotonous comedy routines long before the end.

But in the end, despite its flaws, this is a genuinely funny film, and there aren't that many of those around.