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Sometimes films emerge from Hollywood in pairs. When one production
company goes out on a limb with a certain type of movie, another will
often fast track a comparable film to compete. So for every Bug’s Life
there is an Antz and for every Volcano there is a Dante’s Peak (good
luck picking a favorite from those last two…yikes).
While Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express have very different
plots and settings, both are genre bending action comedies featuring
unlikely heroes. Pineapple Express seeks to take a stoner film,
Apa-tize it, and turn it into a buddy-action-comedy, while Tropic
Thunder attempts to mix elements from war movies and comedies to end up
with a lampoon on Hollywood and action movies that still works as a
Hollywood action movie (in other words-Hot Fuzz for Americans). So of
these two action-comedies, which is the most successful? Let’s take a
quick look at each.
Pineapple Express
I have never smoked weed, so the beginning of this film felt a
bit like one long pothead inside joke. It did not take too long for the
laughs to stark trickling in for me once the plot got rolling, and
after that the movie has its moments.
Part of Producer Judd Apatow's philosophy is to let the cameras
roll in an attempt to foster natural improvisation. Having not seen
another film in the Apatow lineup I can only say that with Pineapple
Express, this strategy is employed with mixed results at best. They let
the movie go places you normally would not expect, giving subplots to
lesser characters that really have no structural point. Sometimes this
works because it is so unexpected, but in others I found myself asking,
“Why did we stay on that scene? What was the point of that extra ten
seconds?” If the extra ten seconds had garnered a laugh from anyone
maybe it would have been worth it, but it has the feel of kids who have
just discovered the notion of moving pictures and think for some reason
that because they are in front of a camera that every thing they do is
funnier and that everyone everyone will be just as excited as they are
to watch themselves…do nothing.
My main problem with the film is its tone and structure. It does
not take long before you realize that the filmmakers could not decide
on their point and just decided to make a funny movie. The problem with
leaving things so unstructured is that you end up leaning on tried and
true comic crutches:
#1 – Make kids, old grannies and tightwad upper middle class
dads use the f-word repeatedly. Yeah, some people still think this is
funny, but it is also lazy, and if you were to write good comedy, not
only will you get the numbskulls laughing, but also the people with
half a brain.
#2 – Be racist. In Pineapple Express they use Asians. They never
specify the nationality, but the jokes are the same old fare: get the
foreign guy to say the f word with a funny accent, get the foreign guy
to talk about sucking a part of the male anatomy with a funny accent,
get the foreign guy to say something unexpected in his own language and
surprise people with the subtitles. Sound redundant? That's because it
was old news even by the time Jackie Chan used the n-word in Rush Hour
(but it was funnier then).
In addition to Rogen’s Dale Denton, you have James Franco
playing Saul, the most loveable character in the movie, and Danny
McBride as Red, who, in addition to his role in Tropic Thunder and the
Foot Fist Way was hilarious in Hot Rod. He is a funny addition here and
after driving his Daewoo into a henchman delivers the film’s best
one-liner.
There are some funny moments: a fight between Dale, Saul and Red
is probably one of the best scenes in the movie, and then there’s the
car chase, which does not disappoint. Unfortunately, there is a movie
around these two scenes, and the rest of it just did not connect for
me. The problem with making a stoner film in which the characters
remain stoners is that you rob your characters’ of development and thus
alienate audiences that care for the characters in the movies they
watch. Movies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail get away with this
because they establish their tone as a spoof from the beginning.
Pineapple Express spends too much time building concern for its
characters and back-story and then leaves you hanging with a film that
is peppered with funny moments, but no satisfying conclusions.
Rated R for pervasive language, drug use, sexual references and violence.
Tropic Thunder
If I were to judge these films based on sheer laugh factor, then
Tropic Thunder would win hands down. In the film’s opening minutes,
they hit a pitch perfect parody of Hollywood marketing strategy that
had me in tears, literally. I would find myself laughing throughout the
movie just at the thought of some of the opening jokes.
As with Pineapple Express, though, Tropic Thunder has a
difficult time establishing its tone: is this a war movie or a summer
action movie; is it an intelligent social satire or an all out farce?
It would probably be better to attend this movie expecting an all out
lampoon, because you will not be as disappointed when you realize that
many of the early digs at Hollywood and genre films are almost totally
uprooted when the film basically embraces the same conventions it
mocked at the beginning. It is apparent that they were going for a Hot
Fuzz feel here, but Hot Fuzz was able to embrace a Hollywood-type
action climax in a way that felt cohesive with the rest of the film.
With Tropic Thunder, cohesion did not seem to be all that high a
priority for the filmmakers, so if you go in knowing that, you will
better enjoy the film and will be surprised at intermittent moments
when it works as intelligent satire.
The cast is obviously having a blast in the movie, and they are
very often a lot of fun to watch, but because they are “dudes playing
dudes disguised as other dudes,” most of the time they feel a bit
distant and unreal, and perhaps that’s what they are going for. Still
it makes it hard to care when the action goes full-blown, and the film
attempts to have it both ways, showing the characters’ change and
growth, but still getting unbelievable action in at the same time.
Stiller, riffing off the Zoolander role, does triple duty as
writer and director, and makes some choices that raised my eyebrows. A
kid plays the main enemy, a choice that seems like it was made just
because Stiller thought it would be random enough to elicit a laugh,
but it didn’t. And then there is Tom Cruise appearing as a feared booty
shaking movie exec…need I say more.
Downey in blackface has created no small stir, but as Manohla
Dargis stated in her review of the film, it is not
<i>his</i> black man that is the real blight on black
culture, because that joke is really a dig at method actors. The real
dig is the refusal to cast a black man in a role other than the
Puffy-inspired hip-hop caricature played by Brandon Jackson. I guess
the question on my mind is: when will Hollywood give blacks the chance
to sink their teeth into the meatier roles like Downey’s?
Oh, and Jack Black is in the movie doing his take on a jonesing
heroine addict going through withdrawals, but the joke is pretty
one-note and on the nose. Like most Will Farrell movies it would almost
be enough to carry a sketch, but a whole movie? No.
Rated R for pervasive language including sexual references, violent content and drug material.
The Final Verdict
Pineapple Express was at a disadvantage from the beginning since
I am not a decriminalization fan or weed enthusiast, and because I do
love movies and movie trivia, Tropic Thunder was definitely more up my
alley. Nonetheless, I felt that both of movies had one thing in common:
they were both a mess. They had potentially good ideas, but ran in too
many directions and left all sorts of potential hanging in the air.
Ultimately, I think Tropic Thunder is the better film, if only
to see the opening twenty minutes and Downey’s performance, but
whichever film you choose, realize that you must wade through a lot of
dead time to get the laughs and that there have been other movies that
have succeeded far better at the intended goals than either of these.
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