The Ben Stiller film I was waiting for

Rating: 10/10 (13 August 2008)

Tropic Thunder - Five actors are sent to shoot a war movie in Laos after their film goes over-budget, with the catch being that there are also some gun-toting drug den dwellers occupying the jungle. The bunch is comprised of a normal actor (Jay Baruchel), a rapper/actor named Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), a comedian (Jack Black) that's an Eddie Murphy/ Mike Myers/ Robin Williams hybrid, action star Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller) who once played a mentally handicapped man to try and get an Oscar, and Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.) who is the sort of extremist method actor Hollywood loves to dote with Oscars, so for this role he has donned blackface.
Dear god this movie is funny! Forget just war movies (Though it rips those up aplenty. It riffs Saving Private Ryan, Platoon, countless dying scenes...) this movie delivers Hollywood's head on a stake. Right from the start the movie also spoofs Disaster movies, sequels, lowbrow comedies, and historical films. Tropic Thunder crosses so many boundaries and insults so many people with such skill and humor that it has to be given the highest praise in return. Several insults are only surface deep though. The Association for the Mentally Handicapped has been up in arms about this movie, but if they were to pay close attention, it's really Hollywood's use of these people that the film is spoofing.
Ben Stiller is good. It might have actually been funnier if his part was played by Steven Seagal, but that man could never allow himself to be beaten up in a film, or act. Stiller tones down the parts of previous performances I've hated, and keeps the funny parts. Jack Black delivers so many funny lines pitch perfectly as the least likable of the characters. Brandon T. Jackson and Jay Baruchel (who actually did play a mentally deficient person in Million Dollar Baby) provide strong comedic support. But Robert Downey Jr. runs away with the show in a role that should be completely tasteless, wrong, unfunny, and nonexistent. But oh my god if he does not pull it off and steal the show incidentally. He's wonderful. As Kirk Lazarus he almost never breaks the character's character, even when it's clear that no cameras are around. Every other line from his mouth is a gem, and you know some of the lines from this movie will become tired once they're put on T-shirts and quoted by 13-year olds.
The writing overall is top notch. I know a movie must be pure awesome when I am loving the performances of Tom Cruise and Matthew McConaughey, two actors I really don't like. Funnier with more bite than Borat. A better send-up than Hot Fuzz, Tropic Thunder is the Ben Stiller film I was waiting for and unaware than I was waiting for. It gets an A.