NEWS

Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder Fights The Good Fight

Last night Complex rolled to a rough-cut screening of Tropic Thunder, Ben Stiller’s new summer comedy about a group of pampered actors who get caught in real jungle warfare while filming your average Vietnam War flick. The premise sounds like a cross between ¡Three Amigos! (awesome) and Delta Farce (considerably less awesome), and given that it’s been a minute since a Stiller comedy wowed us, we weren’t sure what he’d deliver. The first good sign was that he was present for the screening, as were his parents and Larry David.

It turns out that Stiller, who co-wrote, directed, and starred in the movie, is sitting on a banger (you know a movie’s funny if it makes the god Larry David cackle). Stiller and Jack Black are back. Tom Cruise’s cameo as a ball-breaking movie producer is crazy…funny. Everyone is so strong that you can’t say one performance steals the show, but Robert Downey Jr. as a Russell Crowe-inspired Aussie thespian in black face is ballsy and hysterical. Between this and Iron Man (release date: May 2), Downey Jr. is going to own the summer. Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen’s weeded crime thriller Pineapple Express (August 8) will have a legitimate box office battle on its hands when Tropic Thunder drops on August 15. Peep the trailer after the jump.