A hilarious send-up of Hollywood and film-making

Rating: 9/10 (30 August 2008)

This is a stark-raving hilarious film that I highly recommend. (And I may have MILD spoilers here, so be warned.) Stiller is, as usual, funny in an almost unintentional way. He fills out his character outrageously, and manages to make us forget all other characters he's played - even though a similar outlandish, Zoolander-like thread runs through them all, including this one.
But Robert Downey, Jr. steals this show with his portrayal of a black-face actor who is VERY into his character. The irony is that when critics first got hold of photos of him in black-face, they were outraged. Ironic, because the real black character is outraged IN THE MOVIE that the actor-portraying-actor-portraying-black man is in black-face (you'll see.) The only downside is that some of the sound is quite bad here. Downey's character whispers a lot of his lines - either that, or the sound was "off" a bit. Other characters are at times hard to understand. Then again, they are shouting against gunfire sometimes.
Jack Black was a bit weak, sadly, but he does manage to get a few great lines out while portraying a drug-addled actor going through withdrawal (though in a movie-like, almost cartoonish way, by detoxing almost immediately.)
The opening battle scene is almost awe-inspiring in its realism, up to a point. Some have said the movie's set-up in the beginning, and the first few minutes, are like, in a way, Saving Private Ryan and the D-Day invasion scene. Again, up to a point, when humor takes hold after "cut" is called on that opening scene, letting the audience in on the fact that this is a movie set, and not another fake trailer.
The one-liners throughout are classics. The fake movie ads that intro the characters at the start are jaw-droppingly funny.