It is too easy to say that "Tropic Thunder" is going after not the developmentally disabled, but "overweening ambitious actors" who seek roles playing the afflicted as "Oscar-bait."

I mean, those overweening and ambitious actors include some fairly respected guys, such as Daniel Day Lewis ("My Left Foot"), Dustin Hoffman ("Rain Man") and Tom Hanks, who whose back-to-back Oscars in 1993 and 1994 now seem, in retrospect, inevitable in their back-to-backness: "Philadelphia"(dying AIDS victim) and "Forrest Gump" (uh, oh..."The R Word.")

It probably begs the usual issue of "what IS a great Oscar performance?" to note that playing affliction practically guarantees the statue. Oscar performances usually involve characters who are memorable in some way. Normal people can win (Ernest Borgnine's lonely butcher in "Marty", for instance), but roles that require physical and vocal changes, make-up, movement -- those get all the attention.

If homicidal madness is an affliction, that explains the wins of Kathy Bates for "Misery" and Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, a year apart in '90 and '91.

Drunk acts win, too, whether serious (Ray Milland,"The Lost Weekend", Nicolas Cage, "Leaving Las Vegas") or funny (Lee Marvin, "Cat Ballou," John Wayne, "True Grit.")

Playing afflicted roles doesn't guarantee the Oscar, though. Sean Penn didn't win for "I Am Sam", nor did Robert DeNiro for "Awakenings." Nor did DeNiro as the mad killer in "Cape Fear" (mad killer Hannibal Lecter beat him.)

The thing is, audiences generally responded to all of the above performances, usually with empathy and tears, sometimes with laughter (Marvin, Wayne, even Hoffman in "Rain Man."), sometimes with screams (Hannibal.) They WERE good roles, and good actors were necessary to play them. (the very gifted Daniel Day Lewis went the full-tilt technical route in "My Left Foot" and left winsome star acting behind for that one.)

"Tropic Thunder" evidently mixes and matches its targets: (1) Actors who play mentally challenged to win Oscars(2) actors who get so deep into the role that they live the part (the Method Men) and (3) actors who change entirely to win the Oscar(blackface) We've seen a lot of the afflictions in Oscar performances, a bit less of total changes (Linda Hunt playing a MAN in "The Year of Dangerously"? That person in "The Crying Game?")

I'm hard-pressed to recall as many afflicted-person Oscar-winning female performances. A twist: Marlee Matlin won for playing a deaf woman ("Children of a Lesser God") -- but she WAS a deaf woman.

Jane Wyman won for playing a deaf-mute in "Johnny Belinda" and Patty Duke won for playing the real life trifecta (deaf-mute-blind) of Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker." Audrey Hepburn was nominated for playing blind in "Wait Until Dark."

Nicole Kidman pushed it a bit. Did she win Best Actress simply for wearing an outrageous fake nose? Or for the performance she gave wearing it?

Perhaps the most tricky of afflicted performances was that given by Cliff Robertson in "Charly" (1968.) Robertson won Best Actor for playing a mentally challenged man who becomes a genius thanks to a miracle drug...and then slowly, sadly reverts back to his simple mind as the drug's effects wear off.

Oscar-bait roles, all. And most of them caught the prize. But it is hard to put them in the context of being played by overweening, ambitious actors just BECAUSE of the affliction they played.

All movie stars are overweening and ambitous, aren't they? If we get some great performances out of them playing ret---, er, developmentally disabled persons, it is our gain.

P.S. Congratulations to "Tropic Thunder" for giving issue-starved movie critics some controversy to generate easy columns, newspaper sales, hit/clicks and site traffic. Not since "Borat".....