Tropic Thunder Review

Robert Downey Jr. started the summer movie season with a bang with "Iron Man" and ended the season on the same high note with "Tropic Thunder."
The film surrounds the making of a war movie based on a book, based on a true story. The movie is a disaster, costing too much money and running behind schedule.
Downey plays five-time Academy Award winner Kirk Lazurus, an Australian method actor who undergoes a controversial surgery of having his skin pigmented so he can play the platoon's African-American sergeant.
Lazurus bumps heads with Tugg Speedman, an action hero played by Ben Stiller who appeared in a huge action film and its seven sequels. The two prima donnas can't find real emotion behind the characters and are slowly destroying the film.
It doesn't help their co-star, Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), who is famous for playing an entire family of obese people in "The Fats" and "The Fats: Fart Two," has a small problem with heroin and Brandon T. Jackson, who plays Alpa Chino (sound it out), a rapper turned movie star who is more focused on promoting his energy drink, "Booty Sweat" than the film.
With the movie going down fast, rookie director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) and war veteren Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte) hatch a plan to bring out the true emotion in the actors by "taking them off the grid."
Coogan and Nolte fly the actors out to the jungle, which has been rigged with hidden cameras and tells them the rest of the movie will be filmed guerilla-style. However, the actors have actually landed in drug territory and are being hunted by a heroin cartel.
Stiller is soon captured and still thinks he is being filmed, thus really enjoying being tortured and spit on, saying, "that was good, keep doing that."
Ironically, the rest of the cast must rescue Stiller from his captors, just like they were supposed too do in the movie they are no longer making.
In short, the movie is hilarious.
Stiller wrote and directed the film, and made sure to poke fun at every Hollywood stereotype you can imagine. From a heroin addicted comedy star, to the method actor who "doesn't drop character until he does the DVD commentary," every stab is spot on.
One of the more clever jabs has recently caught severe flack from several groups. The movie Speedman starred in called "Simple Jack." The movie is about a mentally-challenged farm hand who can speak to animals. Speedman hopes the movie will mark him as a serious actor, but the movie just ends up being terrible and slammed by critics.
Is the idea offensive? Yes. However, it is also true.
Several actors in Hollywood have taken roles as someone mentally handicapped or deformed to mark themselves as a "serious actor." I find it hard to believe that this movie gets tagged as bad because it shows actors use mentally-challenged people to gain award-recognition. Shouldn't that make people angry?
And, it's a comedy. There is no sacred ground. Downey is an Australian playing an African-American, and it's funny. It is funny because it is what actors really do in real life.
The movie is one of the best satire films I have ever and has a fantastic cast. Each actor fits his character perfectly and plays them so well you forget you are watching Stiller, Black and Downey and start to think of them as Speedman, Portnoy and Lazurus.
Downey is the best out of the bunch — which may be because he is not tagged as a comedy actor and people don't expect him to be funny — but he outdoes both Stiller and Black in the laughs department. Black is sort of funny, but his character quickly becomes annoying and you aren't sure why you ever thought he was funny in the first place.
Stiller is always great at playing tough guys without a clue and he plays the part to perfection in this film. Watching him interact with the people who have captured him is one of the funniest things in the entire film.
However, the funniest moments in the film don't belong to any of the main cast.
They belong to Tom Cruise.
I never thought I could like another movie with Cruise, but he changed my mind when he put on a bald wig and glasses as Less Grossman in the film. He alone is worth the price of full admission. Cruise plays and extremely foul-mouthed producer who occasionally breaks out in dance to the tune of rap music.
I can honestly say I'm not the biggest of fan of foul language being used to excess in films because I feels it takes away from the movie, but when Cruise is spitting out his lines, I was buckled over in laughter.
Another side character bringing big laughs is Cody, the pyrotechnics supervisor, played by one of my new favorite comedic actors, Danny McBride. McBride recently starred in "Pineapple Express" and brings the same gut-busting material in this film. I don't want to spoil all of his good moments, but I will say he describes his past experiences with pyrotechnics as "almost blinding Jamie Lee Curtis on the set of 'Freaky Friday.'"
I can't say this is the best comedy of the summer, but it is a close second. It is definitely worth seeing and then going back again to show your friends Cruise's new dance moves.

Tropic Thunder
Rated R for graphic violence, language and crude humor
Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black and Tom Cruise
Rating: 3 and one half stars