Last night Paramount Pictures had a Tropic Thunder party hosted by Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. They were on stage making fun of each other, with Downey saying his kid has nightmares about seeing The Heartbreak Kid again. (We all have those nightmares).
There are some joke spoilers in my descriptions. Stop reading if you hate jokes or if you hate Ben Stiller. Or if you hate Ben Stiller's jokes.
Tropic Thunder is about a group actors dropped into the middle of a jungle to shoot a realistic Vietnam war movie. The director Damien (Steve Coogan) tells the cast he has cameras hidden throughout the jungle and that he will also be shooting them but he won't be seen. He talks about how they need to get into the mindset of being soldiers and wants this to be as realistic as possible before he steps on a land mine and gets blows to pieces. The cast looks shocked but Stiller tells them it's part of the movie. He even picks up what he believes to be a special effects head of the director and tells the guys it's just a fake head. He then sticks his finger up into the head and tastes the blood. He makes a face then says, "See? It's just corn syrup. Blood flavored corn syrup." Unknown to the actors, a group of rebels in the jungle heard the explosion and are ordered to check it out. They observe what they believe to be a heavily armed American force. They notice that Stiller has stuck the decapitated head on the end of his rifle and one of the rebels whispers into his walkie talkie that the Americans have no fear of death. It was a really funny scene and Robert Downey Jr. playing a black actor seemed to steal the scene every time he spoke.
In this next scene Stiller's character has been kidnapped and the remaining actors who by now, may or may not realize they're no longer shooting a movie (I'm not sure) plan on breaking him out in the morning. Jeff 'Fats' Portnoy (Jack Black) is telling the others that he needs to be tied to a tree and not let go until his heroin addiction passes. With him tied to a tree, the other actors including Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) and Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) are sitting around a campfire trying ignore Jack's please for some bug spray. Jack is screaming all kinds of things to get untied from the tree, offering parts in his next movie and after a discussion between Kirk and Alpa, where Alpa slips and makes the others think he's gay, offers to suck Alpa's dick if he unties him.
The two scenes shown were hilarious and this film should be a big hit for Paramount. It looks like Stiller had written a very funny movie and with its supporting cast, including cameos by Tom Cruise as a fat balding studio executive and Matthew McConaughey as an agent, Tropic Thunder could be the comedy hit of the summer. Sorry Mike Myers...
