AFTER a few films where he’s been content to milk the family market, Ben Stiller has decided to get edgy for the forthcoming pet project Tropic Thunder – and the results (having caught an early preview) are hilarious!

Stiller stars as pampered action superstar Tugg Speedman, who is cast in the biggest, most expensive war movie ever produced.

Heading out to Southeast Asia with a celebrity cast, including Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), an intense, three-time Oscar®-winning actor, and Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), star of the popular gross-out comedy franchise The Fatties, the actors are soon thrown into a real-life situation and are forced to become the fighting unit they’re portraying, in order to find a way out of the jungle in one piece.

Advance word has been building on Tropic Thunder ever since the first hilarious footage was leaked on the internet. But it’s with good cause. The film looks to be a comedy blast.

Aside from the big three of Stiller, Downey Jr and Black, there’s also appearances from Steve Coogan, as a debut director, Matthew McConaughey, as a PR agent, and Tom Cruise, virtually unrecognisable as an uptight studio boss with a penchant for dancing – and that’s not forgetting Nick Nolte as a grizzled war veteran turned movie consultant.

The film also boasts fake trailers – a la Grindhouse – that introduced the central trio’s past work to audiences, before thrusting them into the middle of a war situation.

It’s inventive, edgy, funny and bloody and proof that Stiller – who also wrote and directed – hasn’t lost his comedy mojo like some more recent big-hitters (Murphy, Myers, etc).

Tropic Thunder opens in UK cinemas in September but is due to debut in the States soon and advance word seems to be positive, confirming that the film lives up to its pre-release hype and billing.

The Hollywood Reporter, for instance, wrote that it’s “a broad action comedy that manages to mix subtlety with satire”. It adds: “Tropic Thunder sends up all things Hollywood, from pampered actors and outrageous media tycoons, to war movies in general. OK, these are easy targets. But Stiller and co-writers Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen hit ‘em with a fair degree of accuracy and consistency.”

While Box Office Magazine opined: “Any movie comedy that mounts such a full-frontal assault on so many fetish objects of contemporary showbiz sanctimony has earned the very wide audience Tropic Thunder will undoubtedly reach.”

Sounding a note of caution, however, was Variety‘s critic, who wrote: “A smart-alecky send-up of Hollywood in general and action films in particular, Tropic Thunder undeniably provokes quite a few laughs, but of the most hollow kind…”

And Screen International added: “Produces some real laughs but was probably more fun to make than it ultimately is to watch.”

History

The film has been an idea of Stiller’s since 1986, when he considered make a short based on the idea of actors returning to the US after making a Vietnam drama and being forgotten like the real veterans were.

After considering that it wouldn’t have been that funny, he revisited the idea 10 years ago and has been working on refining the script ever since.

Once he’d firmed things up, however, finding the right cast was a lot easier – as many Hollywood A-listers rushed to work with Stiller after sensing they were about to become part of comedy gold.

It’s Downey Jr’s casting, though, that has raised the most eyebrows, portraying as he does an award-winning actor whose devotion to method prompts him to win the role of a black man and stay in character for the duration of the shoot.

But while the PC-brigade have had their say already, Downey Jr seems to be winning the vast majority of sceptics over whenever they finally get to see his performance. And Stiller, no slouch in comedy terms, has even gratiously referred to Downey Jr as “an untapped comedy genius”.

Co-star Black, meanwhile, recently declared to Empire magazine that: “Stiller has outdone himself – it’s too damn funny!”

Audiences only have until September 19 to wait to find out. View early photos or watch the trailer

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