Horrifyingly bad.

Rating: 1/10 (19 February 2009)

I had heard that this film "skewers" Hollywood idiosyncrasies. I suppose that's true... if by "skewer" you mean "enshrine".
The five or six main characters (depending on whether you count Matthew McConaughey) are all insipid, spoiled adult-children who have clearly never had a real problem in their lives. You can guess what happens next: they are suddenly faced with real problems, in the form of a Southeast Asian drug army whose bullets aren't rubber.
Except they are, in fact, rubber. The group magically overcomes adversity, faces their fears, and triumphs, all by virtue of that great inner strength Hollywood has given them to deal with the real world. Uh huh, sure. By halfway through the movie I had lost any inkling of sympathy for any of them. By the end I actively wanted them all to die.
I'm horrified and ashamed that this movie was made, presumably with a budget to match the one spent by the fictitious producers. I'm even even more aghast that it was nominated for awards. The movie is a slap in the face to anyone who has ever had to deal with real problems - tortured and killed by real death squads, been molested or abused as children, lost family members to violent crime.
The only way I could see this movie salvaged is if, in the final scene, Ben Stiller had actually lost the hands he only pretend-lost in the beginning. And I don't mean the character Ben Stiller played - I mean Ben Stiller himself.
That would be black comedy, indeed.