Deborah Ross

One-trick pony

Tropic Thunder<br /> 15, Nationwide Unrelated<br /> <em>15, Selected Cinemas</em>

issue 20 September 2008

Tropic Thunder
15, Nationwide

Unrelated
15, Selected Cinemas

Tropic Thunder is an action comedy which stars Ben Stiller, is produced by Ben Stiller and is directed by Ben Stiller, from a story by Ben Stiller and a screenplay by Justin Theroux…and Ben Stiller. So if, after this movie, you don’t feel properly Stiller-ed, I can’t think where you would go from here. I would also like to ask: how much Stiller-ing do you need? Whatever, it’s a send-up of Hollywood which starts rather dazzlingly — at last, a funny film that’s actually funny! — but then droops horribly, even becoming a victim of all the absurdities and excesses it is attempting to satirise. Still, at least it ends in a tiresome, protracted, slapstick shoot-out of the visually gross kind that I haven’t seen since… let me see… ah, got it!… last week’s Pineapple Express.

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