On the desert-island location of Tropic Thunder, a milquetoast director (Steve Coogan) endeavors to film the muscular memoir of a macho paraplegic (Nick Nolte). The filmmaker is saddled with wimpy actors who go together about as well as chalk and chowder.
In general, they represent the band-of-brothers population of war movies. In particular, types that appeal to reliable moviegoing demographics, the action guy with the bulging biceps, the serious actor with the bulging cranium, and the hip-hop impresario with the bulging pockets.
Action lug Tugg Speedman (Stiller) is a Stallone-esque grunter in a sweatband, out to redeem his career.
Speedman's one-note emoting appalls thespian Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), a Russell Crowe-like Aussie perfectionist who resorts to "pigment augmentation" (read: blackface) to play a black.
Lazarus' hubris appalls African American entrepreneur Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), a P. Diddy-like figure who views acting in movies as an extension of the brand.
Then there are the druggie (Jack Black as Eddie Murphy-ish comic Jeff Portnoy, eager for dramatic cred) and the male ingenue (Jay Baruchel as Kevin Sandusky, eager to survive), respectively out of it and new to it. Kevin is appalled that seasoned filmmakers and actors can't tell the difference between prop grenades and the type that sever limbs.
Like the explosives detonated by Tropic Thunder's overzealous technician (Danny McBride), Stiller's film carpet-bombs for laughs when it would be more joke-effective to go for the surgical strike. While aiming for the funnybone, the filmmakers bruise other body parts.
Three performances survive the bombs and the blood and the viscera.
As Tugg's agent, Rick Peck, a role originally written for Owen Wilson, the uncredited Matthew McConaughey is hilarious playing a guy in the Hollywood bubble that bursts when he learns that his client is in mortal danger.
