TROPIC THUNDER — SHOCKTOBER!

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Search and Destroy Comedy
Stiller and Company Launch More Than F-Bombs
By Cole Smithey

A heady blend of outrageous Grand Guignol comic set pieces and fast-twitch dialogue, "Tropic Thunder" walks a fine line of dangerous satire that straddles gallows humor and bawdy pop-culture inflected slapstick. In the midst of filming an "Apocalypse Now"-styled movie an overzealous crew squander a multi-million dollar explosion thereby forcing director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) to plant cameras and explosives in an area of a Southeast Asian jungle for the cast to perform a low-budget reality version of the script.

Action-movie-has-been Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), goofball comedy star/heroin addict Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), Aussie method actor Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), hip-hop pretty boy Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) and nerdy Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) make up the cast of war movie stereotypes. Aside from some scene-stealing by Tom Cruise as a bald and fat Hollywood producer prone to cursing a blue streak, Robert Downey Jr. owns the movie with his comically layered performance as an actor who underwent skin pigmentation treatment in order to play an African American soldier. Downey’s performance will go down in cinema history as one of the most ridiculous yet comically effective experiments of the decade.

The movie opens with a series of hilarious parody commercials that identify each of the main "actors" involved in the film-inside-the-film. An Alpa Chino blurb for an energy drink called "Booty Sweat" goes so far into hip-hop culture’s one-track obsession for poontang as to be cathartic. A Tugg Speedman segment for his flagging "Scorcher" action movie franchise points up the futility of action flick sequels, and Jeff Portnoy’s fat/fart comedy movie series "Fatties" pokes in the ribs of Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy for their efforts in that area of humor.

But it’s the sham trailer for Kirk Lazarus’ gay-themed movie "Satan’s Alley," about lust between priests in the Middle Ages, that induces howls of laughter. Tobey Maguire does cameo honors as the object of desire for Lazarus’ character, and narration by movie trailer narration specialist Don LaFontaine provides added punch to the longing stares of passion.

The satire’s more obvious points of departure comes from movies like "Full Metal Jacket," "Rambo," and to some degree Robert Altman’s "The Player." An ironic use of archetypal war related rock songs shoots daggers at the portentous syrup of Buffalo Springfield’s "For What It’s Worth" that posits "There’s something happening here" as an objective view of a militizia-enforced society at war with itself. The outdated effect of the song is transmogrified into an irreverent post-modern joke.

It’s a movie about the making of a war movie during an era when all bow at the altar of pop culture celebrity, making interaction between the actors hinge on experiences that are already thrice removed from reality. The brilliance of "Thunder’s" lampoonery comes across in its deeply woven threads of self-referencing character actors and deceptively offhand narrative touches that combine to form a perfect storm of comic ideas. A finely tooled supporting performance from Nick Nolte as the narcissistic Viet Nam vet on whose autobiographical book the sub-movie is based, bestows a degree of cynicism that effortlessly matches the American media’s abysmal condition.

The story gets muddled as our team of impromptu soldiers attempt to rescue Tugg Speedman from his incarceration at the hand of a group of heroin purveyors led by a 12-year-old tyrant named Tran (Brandon Soo Hoo). Speedman is reduced to recreating scenes for his captors from his movie "Simple Jack," in which he played a buck-toothed retarded man. Kurk’s reprimand to Tugg for going "full retard" in a movie as a taboo that he should have known better than commit, arrives with examples from "Rain Man," "Forest Gump," and "I Am Sam." Kurt’s insider knowledge about acting rules and styles throws a bravura wink at the profession that’s wrapped up in the being of Tom Cruise’s incarnation as Hollywood mogul Les Grossman.

The movie wraps up with Cruise doing a hip-hop-styled dance to T.I’s "U Don't Know Me" that contrasts darkly to his famous "Risky Business" underwear jig. It’s a lasting moment of sheer rebellion that puts a bow on "Tropic Thunder" as a comedy intent on searching and destroying mediocrity. It’s a movie that knows what it’s up against.

(Paramount) Rated R. 106 mins. 

HIGH ANXIETY — SHOCKTOBER!

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Dedicated to “the Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock,” “Mel Brooks’s “High Anxiety” (1977) arrived as a polished comedy behind Brooks’s successful preceding spoofs, which included the Western genre (“Blazing Saddles”), James Whale’s “Frankenstein” (“Young Frankenstein”), and silent film comedies (“Silent Movie”). “High Anxeity” marked Brooks’s debut as a producer and his first speaking lead role—Brooks was appropriately tongue-tied in “Silent Movie.”

For the cinematographer responsible for emulating Hitchcock’s gifted director of photography Robert Burks, Brooks used the laudable Paul Lohmann, with whom he worked on “Silent Movie.” Lohmann’s compositional contributions to “High Anxiety” cannot be overstated. From start to finish, everything about the look of “High Anxiety” harkens to Hitchcock’s golden era of Technicolor films. Not-so-subtle visual references evince an amalgam of atmospheres from Hitchcock’s “North By Northwest,” “The Birds,” and most justifiably, “Vertigo.” A clever set piece attraction makes great fun of the unforgettable shower sequence from “Psycho.”

Mel Brooks is no Cary Grant, and he knows it. Purposefully playing against type, Brooks throws down the comic gauntlet as Dr. Richard Thorndyke, a height-fearing psychiatrist called upon to take over as the new head of The Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous. Accompanied by his new assistant and chauffeur Brophy (Ron Carey), the jittery Dr. Thorndyke is greeted at the Northern California cliffside establishment by its devious staff members Dr. Montague (Harvey Korman) and Nurse Charlotte Diesel (Cloris Leachman). Nurse Diesel’s pointy-breasted white uniform and noticeable mustache is a tip-off to her double life as a dominatrix of questionable hygiene to Dr. Montague. “Too much bondage, not enough discipline” is Dr. Montague’s amusing complaint during the couple’s hilariously staged closet spanking session.

As in Hitchcock’s films, murder plays a part in Brooks’s imaginative satire. Blasting rock music from a car radio causes a driver to expire from an ear hemorrhage. Complete with orange-tinted viscous blood, deaths occur with an amount of surprise that belies their comic context.

A speaking engagement before a psychiatric convention in San Francisco demands that Dr. Thorndyke stay at its skyscraper Hyatt Hotel where, despite his requests to the contrary, he’s placed in a room on the top floor. The “high-anxiety”-suffering doctor meets Victoria Brisbane (Madeline Kahn), the wealthy daughter to a peculiar patient at the institute. The couple strikes up a romantic relationship in light of their analogous proclivity for “blowing hot and cold.” Brooks and Kahn effortlessly play off one another to rib-tickling delight.

Mel Brooks’s flair for comic riffing against a stylized background of plot devices draws on a long tradition of spoof movies that date back to the first days of sound cinema. The Marx Brothers’ 1932 parody “Horse Feathers” is a prime example. Mel Brooks paved the way for the genre to be broken wide open three years later with a very special parody film called “Airplane!”

Rated PG. 94 mins.

AIRPLANE! — CLASSIC FILM PICK

   Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

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It took a team of three writer/directors (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker) to run with the comic baton that Mel Brooks temporarily passed along after “High Anxiety.” Spoofing disaster films, that were all the rage in the ‘70s, was an obvious choice for a team of filmmakers looking to apply a kitchen-sink approach to getting laughs.

Having worked together in the theater group they founded, the “Kentucky Fried Theater,” the filmmaking trio (known as ZAZ) found inspiration in a 1957 feature drama dubbed “Zero Hour!” starring Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, and Sterling Hayden. Throwing non-stop jokes, gags, and snarky movie references at the wall proved a surefire method for getting humor to stick, slip, and split wide-open.

Much of “Airplane!’s” success can be attributed to its casting of well-established older television actors in eccentric roles. Most of them were dramatic actors that had never done comedy before. Peter Graves was a household name from his long-running stint on TV’s “Mission Impossible” in which he played Jim Phelps, the head of a super-secret government spy agency.

In “Airplane!” Graves plays commercial pilot Captain Clarence Oveur — get it, Captain “Over”? He’s a sex obsessed white-haired fellow who reads a dirty magazine titled “Modern Sperm” in the “wacking material” section of the airport newsstand before taking a call on the “white courtesy phone” from the “Mayo” clinic from a doctor whose office is filled with jars of mayonnaise — just in case the sperm reference wasn’t enough. Well, I did say, “kitchen-sink.”

Once in the cockpit, Captain Oveur gets a visit from Joey, a young freckle-faced passenger that the stewardess brings into the cabin to receive a toy Boeing 707. The warped Captain asks Joey, “You ever been in a cockpit before?” before delving deeper. “Have you ever seen a grown man naked?” The presence of Los Angeles Lakers basketball center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar flying the plane from the co-pilot seat distracts Joey. Kareem tries to keep up the ruse that he is a co-pilot named Roger Murdoch, but Joey knows better. Kareem has to let down his guard.

The film’s mixed bag of cultural references spill out faster than you can catch them. One of the funniest cameo bits comes from Barbara Billingsley, widely known to television audiences as “the Beaver’s mom,” June Cleaver, from the long-syndicated situation comedy “Leave It To Beaver.”

The plane’s stewardess is unable to understand a couple of black passengers, one of whom is in visible pain. With her gray hair set in an expensive coif, Billingsley’s helpful passenger offers her assistance. “Oh stewardess, I speak jive.” She goes on to translate the men’s request for medical assistance before conversing with them on their own terms. It’s a comic bit that never gets old.

Although the filmmakers attempted to replicate the film’s enormous box-office success with a sequel, and a host of other spoof movies, “Airplane!” soars high above them.

Rated PG. 88 mins.