Heard the Thunder yet?

I saw Tropic Thunder today. It was awesome! Hilarious, though not as funny as Pineapple Express. It's a great send-up of war movies and movie making in general. Five actors are dropped into the jungle by their director to make their performances more realistic- when the director is killed by an old land mine, they have to try to make their way back to safety. They are captured by heroin producers who think they're actually DEA agents out to shut them down.

The beginning is a series of fake movie trailers to introduce the audience to the actors- Ben Stiller's Tugg Speedman is an action hero who wants to be taken seriously; Robert Downey Jr.'s Kirk Lazarus is an Australian bad-boy Oscar winner who is so method he has his skin dyed to play a black soldier; and Jack Black is the star of gross-out comedies who wants respectability. They're joined by a rapper-actor (named Alpa Chino- genius!) who is rather offended by Lazarus and a young newcomer who idolizes the older actors.

It's great fun to watch these five actors struggle with the reality of their situation. There's a lot of movie-style blood and gore, though it's used for laughs rather than to scare. The funniest part of the movie is the film's financial backer- played by an unrecognizable Tom Cruise. He's vulgar and selfish, and has no problem with letting his big stars die rather than pay ransom demands (to collect on insurance later). Nick Nolte also appears as the phony war hero whose book the film-in-progress is based on, and Matthew McConaughey is Tugg's agent.