Too be completely honest, I didn’t go into this movie expecting to like it. I didn’t think that I was going to hate it, but I have a very tenuous relationship with Ben Stiller movies. I’ve been burned a couple times, I keep coming back with high hopes of something better then cheap laughs and toilet humor, and after Heartbreak Kid last year I had decided that I’d had enough. So as I walked into the movie theater still on a high from Comic Con’s preview night, I was expecting to sit there and zone out for the next two hours.

Instead what I got was a witty, hilarious, well crafted, and all around fun movie. Tropic Thunder took everything right about making a satire and just ran with it like the hounds of hell was at it’s heals. This wasn’t so much a satire of war movies as a method of making fun of the whole Hollywood industry itself. The movie was above all else entirely self aware of itself, and this is only accented by the fact that it blatantly makes this evident throughout the movie. It bounces around, winks at you, and all but points giant Vegas like signs at it self, saying “isn’t this all ridiculous.” Yes, it pretty much is.

The basic plot is simple, they are shooting a movie in the wilds of Vietnam, due to one hilarious thing or another, its not going well. Lead star Tug Speedman (Ben Stiller) is having issues with his acting, Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) is high as a kite, and Kurt Lazurus (Robert Downey Jr.) is an Australian white guy playing an African-American man and is so immersed in the role that he’s just the sort of crazy you expect in Hollywood. So with executive producer Les Grossman (Tom Cruise) breathing down his neck, the Director (Steve Coogan) throws the whole cast of the movie out into the jungle for some gorilla style filmmaking, and in the attempt not to spoil the whole movie, shenanigans ensue.

Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr. are sold pretty much as the lead trio of the movie, with good reason as they are continuously amazing, but really the entire cast was completely solid. Jay Baruchel continues to enamor me to him every time I see him in anything, Brandon T. Jackson was hilarious throughout (though in the beginning he sounded so eerily like Wanda Sykes that I got confused), Brandon Soo Hoo was an extremely pleasant surprise, and McBride is pretty much always awesome. I do have to say, regardless of how creepy and weird he can be in the news, Tom Cruise stole this whole movie hands down, everything he does is comedy gold the likes of which will pretty much just blow you away. I am not kidding, Tom Cruise’s performance is my absolute favorite part of the movie, with lines that you can’t help but quote later. Honestly, part of me can’t even believe I wrote that, but it’s true.

The script is refreshing in a way I wish would happen more often in movies. It’s satire, and vulgar humor, but in a classy way, kind of like Monty Python with an American flavor and less skits and silly walks. It’s smart vulgarity, not put in there just for the shock value, but because it’s genuinely funny. Perhaps I am being a little too snobbish about a lot of the satirical movies out today, but I think there is a difference between funny and crass, and naked girls running around pretty much appeals to only a certain demographic. There was a point while watching Tropic Thunder that I realized this movie was not only making me laugh but it was also genuinely saying something at the same time, and though what it was saying wasn’t exactly mind blowing, it gave the feeling one gets after a very good joke where you think, “oh my god, you’re right!” This is a movie that, above all else, is extremely fun to watch.

So yeah, I pretty much loved the movie, from the fake trailers at the beginning (one of which, by the way, I almost wish was real) to the awesome credit sequence at the end. So okay Ben Stiller, you get another chance, don’t ruin it.