By Chris Kern

Opened: August 13
Rated: R
Cast: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Steve Coogan, Danny McBride, Nick Nolte
Director: Ben Stiller

It was supposed to be the biggest and greatest Vietnam war movie ever. Starring one of the biggest action movie stars on the planet, an internationally-famous comedian known for his gross-out humor, and a five-time Academy award winner intensely committed to “Method” preparation for every role. A mythical Vietnam war hero adapted the screenplay supposedly based on his own harrowing memoir of the war, and it was all being overseen by a hot-shot first-time British director with a big budget and a location shoot in the middle of a Southeast Asian jungle. What could possibly go wrong?

But during the making of the movie-within-the-movie, Tropic Thunder, everything goes wrong, including delays and gaffes that cause the film to go massively over-budget, a threatened shut-down of the production by the slovenly, foul-mouthed head of the studio (a nearly unrecognizable Tom Cruise in a fat suit and prosthetics), the full-scale firing of the entire film crew by the film’s star/producer, and last but not least, the capture and torture of the film’s stars by a dangerous cartel of drug smugglers who mistake the actors for American DEA agents.

For Kauai, however, the arrival of Tropic Thunder was one of the biggest productions to come to the island since Gene Hackman’s Uncommon Valor filmed its own Vietnam war scenes there  some twenty-five years ago. Hawaii’s gorgeous “Garden Isle” was not only the primary location for the Tropic filming, but also the film’s presence (along with some favorable tax legislation) has helped restart a film renaissance on the island the like of which Kauaiians hadn’t seen in well over a decade. “To put it simply,” says Tim Ryan, a veteran Hawaii entertainment journalist and the executive editor of Hawaii Film & Video magazine, “Tropic Thunder is an enormous coup for Kauai. It’s possible [it] may help bring ‘big’ productions back to Hawaii, and hopefully to Kauai, again.”

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