Tropic Thunder, 4/5

Rated R. Click here to view the trailer.

Tropic Thunder is a stupid, goofy movie, but dad gummit it's funny. Yeah, it's a little edgy and has brought up few ill-informed questions about jokes about blackface and mental health, but it's mostly a genuinely fun movie within a movie and an absolutely perfect cast.

That cast includes Ben Stiller as washed up action star Tugg Speedman; Jack Black as an Eddie Murphy-like crappy comedy machine Jeff Portnoy; Brandon T. Jackson as an entrepreneurial rapper, Alpa Chino and Robert Downey, Jr. as serious Oscar winner who dyed his skin black, Kirk Lazarus. Steve Coogan plays the hilaroiusly inept movie director while Nick Nolte looks grizzled and authentic as Vietnam vet Four-leaf Tayback, the author of the book, Tropic Thunder. Danny McBride pretty much blows stuff up and loves every second of it. There's also a hilarious cameo by Tom Cruise and although his part is particularly foul-mouthed, it is truly comedy gold as is his extended hip hop dancing. Matthew McConaughey is also hilarious as Tuggman's Tivo-obsessed agent.

You get the plot from the trailer: Coogan is attempting to film the greatest war movie ever based on the experiences of Tayback. In order to whip his cast into shape, he, Tayback and his special effects man drop the cast into the jungles of Vietnam and send them off into bush telling them that hidden cameras will capture the cinematic action "guerrilla style."

Black, Stiller, Downey, Jackson and "straight man" Jay Baruchel (the faux-hawk guy from Knocked Up) traipse through the jungle covered in fake ammo and massive (blank-shooting) firepower. Since they're actors in a movie, they have no fear when they come across a Vietnamese drug ring with very real firepower. Sooner or later, Stiller is captured (because, duh, his character is supposed to be captured) and it's up to the rest of the unit to rescue him.

More than anything, the movie is a hilarious skewer of Hollywood. From the trailers that open the movie (Speedman starring in Scorcher VI, Portnoy in, The Fatties, Fart 2; and Downey in Satan's Alley, a medieval take on Brokeback Mountain; Alpa Chino in a commercial/music video for his energy drink, Booty Sweat), and Coogan's inept director to Cruise's take on execs and the "retard issue" (more on that in a minute), Stiller directs the movie to tear Hollywood a new one.

I already mentioned the cast is perfect, but Jack Black and Robert Downey, Jr. particularly stand out. Black actually looks like a convincing action star with bleached blond spikes and one heck of a (heroin-induced) war-cry. But clearly the most praise in the movie has to go Downey and his Kirk Lazarus. I was worried that the funniest parts had been spent in the trailer or that the joke might get too long in the tooth, but it started off funny and get kept getting better as Lazarus got more and more lost in the role refusing to break character even when the camera stopped rolling.

As for the blackface and/or retard controversy? Gimme a break. The movie makes it clear that Lazarus is a jerk who doesn't even know who he is as he pretends to be black. Likewise, it actually defends the "retarded community" by pointing out that Hollywood (and society in general) enjoys a feel-good movie about the mentally disabled, (Forrest Gump, I am Sam, Rain Main) but only as long the characters aren't "full retards." Stiller is actually pointing the finger at us and just how patronizing we can be.