he industry buzz on Ben Stiller's "Tropic Thunder" has been that the movie would be the most expensive and star-studded gross-out comedy in history – a $100 million crude joke with a cast that includes Tom Cruise and Matthew McConaughey. And now that it's here, we see that the rumor is more or less true: The film is gleefully offensive, harrowingly politically incorrect, equal parts gifted satire and laugh-till-it-hurts farce. Occasional bits of the writing is very smart, its strain of show-business satire is dead-on while mocking big-budget movies filled with bullets and explosions (while being a big-budget movie filled with bullets and explosions).

Written and directed by Ben Stiller (co-writing with Justin Theroux and Etan Coen), "Tropic Thunder" is the story of a film being made about the Vietnam War – basically
a movie-within-a-movie - also called "Tropic Thunder." The group of spoiled actors are making a wildly over-budget war movie — five days into shooting, they're a month behind schedule. Their egos are clashing on the set of "Tropic Thunder," a "Platoon"-style Vietnam War movie based on a book by Sgt. Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte).

Sent into the jungles of Southeast Asia to find some motivation, they become unintentionally entangled in real-life peril at the hands of drug lords. Stiller is Tugg Speedman, a fading action star who has signed on to "the most expensive war movie ever made" in an effort to save his flagging career. Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.) is a five-time Academy Award-winning Australian so into "method acting" that he has surgically darkened his skin to play a black man.