TROPIC THUNDER **½

Directed, written and starring Ben Stiller, the film also stars: Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan, Danny R. McBride, Bill Hader, Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Cruise. Rated R for pervasive language including sexual references, violent content and drug material, the comedy is one hour and forty-seven minutes long.

A group of self-absorbed actors (Stiller, Black, Downey Jr.) set out to make the most expensive war film, but after ballooning costs force the studio (Cruise, Hader) to cancel the movie, the frustrated director (Coogan) refuses to stop shooting, leading his cast into the jungles of Southeast Asia with the author of the book the film is based on (Nolte) and a demolitions expert (McBride), where they encounter real bad guys. While this is going on, one of the actor's agent tries to prove his worth (McConaughey).

It's long been my personal feeling that comedy actors shouldn't direct their own films. I think they lose perspective, thinking all of their comedic efforts are hilarious when, in fact many of them aren't. That's the case in this fitfully funny, very violent and incredibly crude film which I suspect many younger viewers will love but older audiences will be offended by, along with their laughter. The film consists of a number of sketches which fit into the plot outline above. Some of them are very funny, many of them aren't. To me, the funniest part of the entire film were the three fake trailers before it starts. That's the problem here, you can be very, very funny in two or three minutes but when it starts to drag on longer than that, the humor wears thin pretty quickly.