A smart comedy that makes fun of everything

Rating: 8/10 (8 June 2009)

I've read a good number of the negative reviews of this movie, and it didn't surprise me at all that a lot of people didn't get it. There are a LOT of people who don't understand or get parody, at all, and everything truly funny in this movie was parody.
Even the cheap gags (such as the fart trailer) were parody of movie that use nothing but cheap gags for laughs. The "gory parts" were parody of movies that thrive on violence and gore.
They made fun of several types of themed movies, plus actors, plus agents, plus directors, plus producers, plus fanatic fans, plus big stunts ... it goes on and on.
Robert Downey Jr. was absolutely brilliant as a serious Austrailian actor playing a hard bitten black soldier so thoroughly that he couldn't ever force himself out of character. ("I don't drop character until after the DVD commentary". LOL) His masquerade as a local ... speaking a Chinese dialect with a black accent is just classic comedy.
I haven't seen this much parody packed into a movie since "Dewey Cox", another deeply funny parody.
If you just wanted to stare slack jawed at a screen while the director spells EVERYTHING out for you until a movie is done, you won't like this movie at all.
If you don't object to being challenged to LISTEN to the dialog, and mentally make the connections between each element of this movie, what its making fun of, and how, then you'll hurt your sides laughing. I'm going to have to watch it a second time, at least, to get all the references, because I'm sure that I missed many follow up lines while I was laughing at the one before it.
A good litmus test for this movie was my wife, who will not laugh at a movie filled merely with potty humor ... at all. She didn't know what to expect, and was frowning at me that I still had this playing after the faux trailers at the beginning, and especially after the gratuitous gore in the opening filming sequence. THEN some dialog caught her attention, and she started paying attention. Before long we were both howling, frequently. After the movie, she looked at me and said, "I did NOT expect to be laughing at that movie so much!"
The sequence where Robert Downey chides Ben Stiller for an earlier role where he went "full retard" is, honestly, some of the best comedy repartee since some newsroom scenes in "His Girl Friday".
Crude at times? Check. Violent at times? Check. Funny ALL the time? Check.