TROPIC THUNDER: I hate the smell of self indulgence in the morning - or, indeed, at any time of day

I must be a sucker for punishment.

I went to see TROPIC THUNDER on its cinematic release in the summer of 2008. It was a birthday treat and I hated it - the film not the treat that is, although it did turn the treat into something of an ordeal.

I couldn’t believe that something so heavily hyped as the comedy event of the season and so laden with comedic talent could be so bereft of laughs.

It left me with a nagging feeling that maybe I missed something so I’ve just watched the film again on DVD.

I hadn’t missed a thing.

This second viewing was no more enjoyable than the first. All it did was confirm my initial impression although, on the plus side, I now have a much clearer understanding of why it doesn’t work.

The film is based on the mistaken premise that us ordinary folk find the inner workings of Hollywood as fascinating and relatable as those who actually work in the film business.

TROPIC THUNDER is a movie about the making of a film called TROPIC THUNDER – a big budget Vietnam War action epic with eerie similarities to “Apocalypse Now” - being shot on location in south-east Asia and beset by problems.

The clashing egos of the three stars have put the production a month behind schedule after just five days of shooting and studio head Les Grossman (Tom Cruise) is threatening to murder the first-time director (Steve Coogan) if he doesn’t regain control.

A bizarre series of events finds the cast abandoned alone in the jungle, believing they’re shooting the film guerrilla-style and unable to differentiate make-believe from reality when they’re targeted by a ruthless, real-life gang of heroin traffickers.

TROPIC THUNDER is the multi-million dollar equivalent of you or I making a movie about our workplace and filling it with the characters, egos and sometimes bizarre behaviours which make us laugh or cringe and provide us with the material for jokes and stories to share with our co-workers.

But you’ve got to be there to find it funny.

Chances are that if you’re not then my stories about the weird personal habits of one of my office colleagues are likely to leave you cold.

Granted that a satire on the machinations of Tinseltown will have broader appeal than one set in my office but really, how many of us know enough agents or studio moguls to find the inside jokes funny?

Spoofing the actors is a more promising proposition and in Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), Jeff

Portnoy (Jack Black) and Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey jr) we get three fictitious film stars very clearly modelled on real-life headline grabbing stars.

Speedman is a Stallone-like action hero whose Rambo-style “Scorcher” franchise has run to six, increasingly repetitive instalments. Portnoy is a combination of the worst of Eddie Murphy and Chris Farley, while five-time Oscar winner Lazarus – “the greatest actor of his generation” – could easily be mistaken for Russell Crowe.

With everything we know about Murphy, Stallone and Crowe from their films and the gossip columns there should be plenty of material for some very pointed and funny satire.  

Unfortunately writer-producer-director and star Ben Stiller has opted to rely on the cast’s ability to improvise rather than use this source material to provide them with a strong script. And as is painfully clear from one of the accompanying DVD featurettes encouraging the cast to make it up as they go along just ain’t funny.

The bulk of the laughs come in the film’s first seven minutes. The subsequent one hour and forty minutes generate a meagre six or seven chuckles and an awful lot of silence, broken only by the sound of audible cringing at Tom Cruise’s excruciatingly unamusing and disturbing cameo.

The sum of the parts of TROPIC THUNDER add up to considerably less than its whole and I predict that a year from now few will even remember this self-indulgent bore.