This is the story of Four Leaf Tayback [Nick Nolte] in the Vietnam war being adapted from the published novel into a feature length film. The filming of this movie hits many financial and structural problems as the director, Damien Cockburn [Steve Coogan], is young and inexperienced in managing a big budget film, and the actors are all huge stars attempting to share the screen.

This movie is straight up hilarious. The last time I enjoyed a Ben Stiller movie was “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story”, so I’m a full on Ben Stiller hater. Like everyone else in the world I am a Robert Downey Jr. fan, I love Steve Coogan , and am also a 50:50 fan of Jack Black movies. So after all was said, I wasn’t sure how I would take this movie. However, after reading all the positive reviews, and hearing about all the “retard” controversy I decided I had to see this one as soon as possible, just for the sake of being able to have my say on this controversy.

Controversy surrounded this film from when they cast Robert Downey Jr. as a black character in the film being filmed in the film, and also when Ben Stiller’s character played a retarded character in the flop film, “Simple Jack”. The Special Olympics community – and other individuals speaking on the behalf of the handicapped – came out asking for the movie to be boycott unless Ben Stiller would recut the film so as to edit out all of the excessive use of the degrading word. The studio decided that all they would do is take down the website advertising the fake film “Simple Jack” and leave the film as is. I have to agree that in the context of all of the controversial jokes they all work and are in no way offensive. The only way they can be taken in bad light is if maybe an eight-year old were to see it, which won’t happen since the movie is rated R.

However, with all the stars being top billed the cameos made this movie extra-special for me. Tom Cruise is downright my favourite part of this movie. He is the movie producer/backer I never want to meet or work with. He is the most ridiculous character I have seen in a long time. It is rumoured to be based off of a producer friend of Stiller. If I buy this DVD it will be for the Cruise factor here.

With all the praise in this review so far, I must say that this movie is nowhere near perfect. Nearing the end of the film when the huge action sequences begin is when I start to have my problems. Not because it isn’t funny [because it’s the action part of the movie], but because the movie is really just losing its point here. The movie really is poking fun at all sorts of things, but generally at film-making and when these huge action scenes went on all the characters acted completely “retarded”.

[spoiler]

In the final half hour of this film Robert Downey Jr. and company infiltrate the Red Dragon’s heroin processing compound to rescue Ben Stiller. They use their acting skill to trick the guards and take some control over the compound.

So they have entered the compound and have all the guards on the ground. Why is it that these actors [who by now all know that this is the real deal] don’t have the sense to pick up a real gun? All of them are parading around with fake prop weapons all this time. They even have a full on shoot-out with these prop guns. Alpa Chino [Brandon T. Jackson] – I nominate for best character name of the year – even goes so far as to reload his prop gun with more blank bullets. Like I understand this is supposed to be a comedy, but we’ve hit our big action sequence, can we have some semi-sensible action?

[/spoiler]

This movie is exactly what every Ben Stiller and comedy fan would want from a parody movie. I would suggest this movie to anyone who has any small understanding as to the making of films; even as little as knowing what a “key grip” is. Those people will get an extra laugh or two out of this movie. And movie buffs will love this even more, because you will laugh at the ridiculousness of the characters, roles and actors playing these characters. This is a great comedy and I hope Mr. Stiller doesn’t fall back into the shit like Heartbreak Kid again after this awesome movie.

IMDB says 7.8/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 84%

I say 8.5/10