"Tropic Thunder" starring Ben Stiller and Jack Black

To watch the trailer of "Tropic Thunder" click the play > button.

These bizarre creations usually adorn films in which the funnyman provides the supporting work (DODGEBALL, HEAVYWEIGHTS), but, whenever he's directing, he's free to build an entire filmic universe around his asinine, ludicrously funny, culture-skewering characters and premises. His ZOOLANDER (2001) bit at the entertainment industry with silly abandon, but Stiller has firmly set TROPIC THUNDER within the realm of sophisticated Hollywood satire.

Rated: R for pervasive language including sexual references, violent content and drug material

Runtime: 1 hr 47 mins

Genre: Comedies
Theatrical Release: Aug 13, 2008 Wide

Box Office: $106,805,722
Synopsis:  In it, a desperate director named Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) trying to make a Vietnam war movie drops his pampered actors into the heart of the jungle. Cockburn's stars include Stiller as an action hero who's starting to make bad career choices, Jack Black as an insecure low-brow comedy star going through heroin withdrawals, and Robert Downey Jr. as an Australian Oscar winner so lost in his "craft" he underwent a procedure to become black for his role. In the jungle, they remain under the delusion that they are still being filmed even after they encounter a dangerous gang of druglords. The film's basic premise has popped up several times since Hollywood's 1970s golden age in films such as THREE AMIGOS! and GALAXY QUEST. Where those films simply blanketed a classic Overconfident Bumbling Idiot comedy showcase with a pop culture lexicon, however, TROPIC THUNDER could have only been made, as on-the-nose at is, by people who have been working in the Hollywood system for years, making cutting observations along the way. Simply put, this raucous satire knows big-budget filmmaking, the delusional narcissism of actors, and even the good points of those actors--perhaps why they're celebrated--like the back of its hand.

Starring: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey, Brandon T. Jackson

Starring: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey, Brandon T. Jackson, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Steve Coogan, Bill Hader, Nick Nolte, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Cruise

Director: Ben Stiller
Screenwriter: Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux, Etan Cohen
Story: Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux
Producer: Ben Stiller, Stuart Cornfield, Eric McLeod
Composer: Theodore Shapiro
Studio: Dreamworks SKG