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"Jungle boogie. In the decade since he became a household name Ben Stiller has drifted primarily towards two comfortably generic personas: the tightly-wound, put-upon Everyman (see: Meet the Parents, Night at the Museum) and the preening buffoon (see: Zoolander, Starsky &amp;amp; Hutch). All the world loves a clown, and Stiller has been content to be one, nuance be damned. \n\nTropic Thunder, however, finds Stiller as star, co-writer and director attempting a skewering of Hollywood &amp;#45; a genre that requires a scalpel, where he favors blunt instruments. The set-up casts Stiller in buffoon mode as Tugg Speedman, an action-film star whose box-office clout is running out of steam and whose attempt at &amp;quot;serious actor&amp;quot; respectability playing mentally-challenged in Simple Jack flopped miserably. He&amp;#39;s leading the ensemble in a Vietnam War drama titled Tropic Thunder, along with co-stars -- including multi-Oscar winner Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey, Jr.), a Method maniac who had his pigment altered to play an African-American soldier; and heroin-addicted comedy actor Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) -- who are causing just as much trouble for rookie director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan). So Cockburn and the movie&amp;#39;s grizzled technical advisor (Nick Nolte) decide to drop the actors into the jungle for a more guerilla-style filming technique -- where they promptly encounter real danger in the form of a well-armed drug operation. \n\nThe opening 10 minutes hold out the promise of one of the year&amp;#39;s most hilarious comedies, including a trio of faux movie trailers introducing the preferred milieu for each of the three principal actors. Lazarus and Tobey Maguire make cow eyes at each other as closeted gay monks in Satan&amp;#39;s Abbey; Portnoy plays multiple flatulent, fat-suited characters in a vicious swipe at Eddie Murphy. Even the early moments of over-the-top violence from the movie-within-the-movie -- a bayonet-slashed private (Jay Baruchel) tries to gather his intestines, and Speedman&amp;#39;s character goes down in a hail of Platoon-inspired gunfire -- are funny in context. Give Stiller a full-length feature of cinematic parody sketches, and it&amp;#39;d kill."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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