Many movies come out during the summer. Most of them make you laugh uncontrollable, have you awestruck with amazing action scenes or make you cry most of the time leading to a useful life lesson. Then comes a movie like “Tropic Thunder” who attempts to be all three and leaves you going “…what?”

This movie is, in a word, confusing. The even confusion starts off at the get-go with fake movie previews. I am not kidding, my mother came in during these and had no clue what was going on. I kind of got it: it was just to show how the stars of this movie are movie stars. It’s supposed to be clever, but it was just unnecessary: later on Ben Stiller’s character watches an entertainment show that explains all their back-stories ANYWAYS!

Speaking of Ben Stiller’s character, guess who he plays? Basically: Ben Stiller! They call him a different name, but he’s playing a character that’s and actor playing a character, and he more or less acts like himself and his character in most movies (a goofy, self-doubting hero) so, I say he was playing the role of Ben Stiller. Beyond him, Jack Black is in this movie too. Who does he play? A buffoon who does drugs and his career has been going a bit down lately. Basically, he’s playing Jack Black! This movie also stars Robert Downy Jr., the best actor of the bunch, who plays, naturally, the best actor of the bunch. He had to wear “black make-up”, which caused controversy both in the movie and for the movie. Also, there’s an un-known actor staring in this movie who plays an un-known actor. Man, this is a movie that breaks the fourth wall yet seems to try to deny it. Does that even make sense?

Alright, so after we see the previews we get to see this pretty cool action movie, which is “Tropic Thunder”. After a few explosions with guts and blood everywhere, Ben Stiller calls for a cut and shows us that this movie is about the making of a movie. We learn that, despite the films short time filming, it’s already over budget and delayed beyond reason. The director gets blamed for all of it, so to compensate, he gets convinced by this hook-handed veteran (I’ll talk more about him later) to drop them in the jungle and film them “gorilla style”. After going into the jungle and convincing them that it’ll partially be real so it can look real, the director steps on a landmine and gets blown up.

At that point, I wonder if this movie is fiction or not, because that’s the exact point the movie gets confusing. Upon seeing their director get blown up, some of the actors realize that he really IS dead, but others think that he faked it with special effects. After that, it becomes kind of hard to figure out which ones are acting, which ones are going along with it for now to survive. I guess maybe I should have just gone along with it and enjoyed some jokes, but the fact is there weren’t that many. It seemed like the movie was trying to be serious some of the time and trying to be a comedy others. So, you can take this at a comedy and be disappointed by the lack of actual jokes or you can look at the big picture and find this unfunny and confusing.

Anyways, the actors track on, hoping to get back home, survive and possibly make a good movie, all the while slipping in and out of character so your never sure if they mean what they say. The stuff happening that’s beyond their control coincidentally syncs up with their script, making me continuously ask the question “Do they know it’s no longer a movie or not?” Eventually, there are enough arguments from both schools of though that Ben Stiller splits from the group. Eventually he gets captured by the Flaming Dragons, who are heroine-producers. You’d think at this point he’s realize its not fictional anymore, but no, it still syncs up with the script so he goes along with it. The other cast members (which we assume realize that it’s no longer a film) find him eventually, see that he’s in actual danger and have to come up with a plan to get him out. What genius plan do they come up with? They follow the script of course, because it had a plan to get Ben Stiller’s character’s character out of that situation. So lets me try to explain this again: Ben Stiller thinks he’s still making a movie but is in real danger so his friends, who know he’s in real danger, are going to basically make the movie. Confused? Well that’s how I was while I was watching. At that point I thought of leaving the theatres, but I was afraid that if I did, I’d walk up on the set of the movie.

With the mention of the Flaming Dragons, it seems as good a time as any to mention the two other groups of people outside our band of heroes. First, we have this duo of behind the scenes workers: the special FX guy, Cody, and the guy who wrote the story, an apparent war veteran with hooks for hands named Tayback (played by Nick Nolte and Ben Stiller’s Character’s Character). Know what? I think these actors actually DON’T play themselves! So finally, a few points for originality. Cody basically makes thing go “boom!” and Tayback was the one who suggested that they drop the stars in the jungle. They end up getting captured by the Flaming Dragons soon after their director explodes. We also discover that Tayback still has both hands and his “Tropic Thunder” is purely fictional. He claims it to be an “homage” to the real heroes and Cody calls him the “Milli Vanilli of war patriots”… I had to ask my mom why that was funny. Anyways, like I already said, they get captured pretty early on, so you don’t really see them doing much, which is a shame cause they are the least confusing characters in this movie. The other group I have yet to mention, however, are the most confusing. I am talking about Ben Stiller’s agent, Rick (played by Matthew McConaughey), and studio executive Les Grossman, who is played by Tom Cruise. Gotta admit, there is some good acting by Tom Cruise, no one watching the movie could believe it was him. Anyways, their big role comes into play when Stiller gets captured and the Flaming Dragons ask for a ransom. They say no to them (by cursing them out) and after that I had a hard time understanding why: did Grossman think it was another talent agency, a prank call, a bluff or did he just want Stiller to die? The reason I think it was the most was for the insurance money, but I’m still not 100% sure on that. Rick then to becomes confusing too, because I don’t know if he was being loyal to Ben or if he was siding with Les. I am not kidding: after Grossman tells him about his insurance plan, he like says and does nothing. To be fair, this makes for some suspense, but it was suspense I forgot about quickly, being a secondary character, and didn’t really care about.

Anyways, back to the main plot. So, Stiller gets captured and held up for ransom, but it ends up his captures are big fans of one of his flop movies, “Simple Jack”. So they make him play the movie, and he receives so much praise for it (and blows to the head) that he starts to like it there. His friends infiltrate the heroine-factory by following their original script and find him. At that point, Robert Downey Jr. and Ben Stiller say the lines that sum it all up for me:
“I’m a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude.”
“Maybe you don’t know which dude you are.”
It wouldn’t surprise me Ben, that’s how you all seem to be playing your characters. I’m going to make the rest of the movie simple: they want to save him, but he wants to stay. They all have career changing epiphanies, find Cody and Tayback and escape. Stiller, who came to his senses after being stabbed by a toddler, does an amazing last minute escape with an explosion right behind him. After that, the screen pans out to an award show and it ends up we were watching a movie. Wait, WHAT? So, was this movie about a movie about a movie, or did they use the footage to make the original “Tropic Thunder” idea, or did they go back and finish it, or… WHAT? This ending is the most confusing part of all and the most confusing ending I have ever seen!

Seriously, this movie is too confusing! Maybe you think that while reading this that you could follow along, but that would be after reading a summary and not before, so it wouldn’t count. If you can’t follow along, GOOD, you’re where I was while watching it. I honestly can’t tell if this is supposed to be a comedy with some seriousness to it or a serious movie with some comedy in it: the funny members of the cast seem so out of place with their dramatic surrounding and the serious actors can really deliver a joke that well themselves. I mean, not to say that there was nothing funny in it, but nothing really worth mentioning or that brings this movie to the point I can say that it IS a comedy. Seriously, did someone with bi-polar disorder write the script? Did the three stooges write it together, each arguing about what it should be? This reminds me of these stories we wrote in high school where we had to pass the page to the next person so they could write the next part, so what you’d get is a story of mixed styles with no direction what so ever. Yeah, I think that’s what they did…

So, that’s Tropic Thunder, its confusing and I can’t stress that enough: you can’t tell if it’s a comedy or a drama, if it’s real or fake or what anyone in the movie really thinks. I have to admit, most of the actors did a good job, but that’s not hard when you have to play yourself! Maybe I should look for a moral of some kind in this movie, something like “Be yourself”? …Nah, this movie isn’t smart enough for a moral. I give Tropic Thunder a 4 out of 10 and recommend that you see this movie only if you can get a sheet explaining all the characters motives and thoughts from the producers themselves. If you don’t know their phone numbers, then never mind, watch either a good comedy or action movie. Try watching both at the same time if you want the same effect.