Dumb Bunnies
Perhaps the most interesting, under-noted thing about Tropic Thunder is that it lacks women. There are no WAGs (Wives and Girlfriends) to muck up this war-buddy comedy, the only 
name actress to make a recognizable appearance I saw was Jennifer Love Hewitt, and that was 3 seconds, at the end (it’s the mildly amusing payoff to a joke set up much earlier).
In the current axis of male comedy - the Ben Stiller/Will Ferrell/Judd Apatow thing we’ve got going where they can do almost no wrong - one of the least appealing elements is that they have created some impressively poor roles for women. Think Christina Applegate’s thankless part in The Anchorman, or Amy Poehler’s largely wasted presence in Blades of Glory… or the way Stiller wastes his wife in things like Zoolander. The ones we tend to celebrate - parts like Catherine Keener’s in The Forty Year Old Virgin, or Katherine Heigl’s in Knocked Up - tend to underline the issues: women are meant to be adoring, cool sidekicks, and little more.
Superbad? Don’t ask.
Tropic Thunder is at least honest - this is about boys getting to play soldier with no girlz allowed, and it’s as childish, and rude, and thoughtless as you might expect. It’s also damn funny, and a pretty impressive leap for Stiller from his formulaic approach to recent comedy.
Now if we can just teach him to like girls.
Tropic Thunder is the tale of film making gone awry. A big budget piece of Vietnam era Oscar bait is being filmed disastrously, and the film’s largely ineffective director decides to go verite on his starts’ asses, sending them into the jungle with only plot points and some cameras in the trees. And then he just blows up.
That leaves Ben Stiller as the dopey, Stallone-like action star to try and take matters in hand. He’s joined by a one note comic (Jack Black, doing a sort of Chris Farley thing), and a “serious star” of Aussie background (think Russell Crowe) who’s so into the work he’s dyed himself black to get the best role.
Only Robert Downey Jr. could take one of the most potentially volcanic, offensive possibilities - a modern blackface - and somehow make it work. He does it by utterly committing to this actor’s reality (I can only urge you to watch the sublime moments when the action is centered elsewhere, and Downey is off to the side - it’s marvelous), and letting the comedy come from character. And when we do get to the heart of the matter, it’s Downey who finds the soul of his character… and the soul of the film.
Stiller (along with actor turned writer/producer Justin Theroux) takes enormous chances to offend here: from the dicey discussion of playing the mentally challenged, to the dicey disussions of race on film, to the dicey business with small children turned soldiers in the jungles of Asia… Tropic Thunder leaves behind no chance to find the edge and go past it. That’s also true of Tropic Thunder’s Hollywood based contingent of agents and producer financiers - Matthew McConaghey turns in one of his most satisfyingly smug performances as Stiller’s agent, while Tom Cruise astonishes as the producer/financier who seems to relish his Master of the Universe possibilities, as well as his gangsta hip hop.
That’s not to say Tropic Thunder works entirely - Black, for one, is cruelly wsted in a thankless part, while Brandon Jackson acquits himself nicely as the actual black man on hand to critique Downey’s fake black, but can’t really escape the film’s ugly implications. Stiller’s still too likely to fire everything at the wall and see what sticks; the film could be tighter, the satire more pointed.
Still, in its “dumb boys with big toys” way, Tropic Thunder makes some sly, effective points about the making of movies (how rare is it to see such an Inside Hollywood film shoot to number one? Very), as well as some equally sly ones about our pop culture, not the least of which is our confused, multiracial notions of entertainment that don’t seem to spill over to our social lives. Outside of Spike Lee, who even tries to tackle this stuff? And really, Tropic Thunder suggests what Stiller has in him is still yet to be revealed. Which isn’t the worst thing.
I also believe more will be revealed of Anna Faris, which is why I wish Stiller would learn to do better with women’s roles - Faris struggles - like many young women in comedy - with a dearth of good parts. Which is why, for all its flaws, I’m really quite cheered by The House Bunny, the fish-out-of-water 
comedy which has Faris playing Sorority House Mother to a group of amiable misfits.
Created by the Legally Blonde writing team, you can see the faint outlines of a “let’s make it look like Legally Blonde, but different” thing going on: ditsy but lovable lead, sad sack support cases who just need a touch of glam and a better attitude, a fight against “mean” authority figures…? Check, check, and check. Reality doesn’t stand a chance.
Faris makes it all work - in a non Reese Witherspoon way - by applying a fizzy, appealing sweetness. That there’s little more than laid-back LA echt driving this doesn’t make that lifestyle wrong. And despite some critical assertions that Faris is carrying the film alone, it’s just not the case - both Emma Stone (as the lead sorority sister) and Kat Dennings (as the “too cool” sardonic foil) both add layers of appeal. People are also going to take note of Rumer Willis (yes, Bruce and Demi’s eldest girl) in a small, easy to handle part.
The House Bunny’s problems stem, naturally, from its confused notions of women’s empowerment: slap on some makeup, shorten your dress, strap on the heels, girls… and it’s all golden. Golden blonde, that is. The House Bunny can’t really sell its contradictions… and mostly, it doesn’t even try. It’s just fun to dress up like the kind of girl boys like, and it’s even better if you can be “real” and be yourself while doing it… or something.
But while the feminist in me wants to moralize, I can’t escape the two obvious realities: first, that young women, at least at my theater, were gobbling this up in droves, and that, when faced with Tropic Thunder, perhaps girly is the way to go, just now. At heart, The House Bunny, in all its chaste glamor (for a Playboy based party - everything’s remarkaby… dressed) believes in the idea that women should support one another, and celebrate all the possibilities of what a woman can be, not try to tear each other down (in this context, it was interesting to see how hurtful “bitch” and “whore” and “slut” really are). It’s not the worst message, really, and it’s why I suspect The House Bunny will succeed more than anyone expects. Which means, eventually, more Faris. I can live with that. I’ll even put up with a few dumb bunnies to get there.
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November 23, 2008 at 9:05 am
[...] the reverse problem of the curious “feminism” in films like Legally Blonde and The House Bunny - where those ...