Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Other articles by Phil Villarreal:

'Conduit' leads new games lineup Local scene: Extra stands up to Johnny DeppAmphi grad, 33, picked for White House FellowshipTucson brothers create iPhone sensationDirector's layoff a blow to AZ Film OfficeEsplendor Resort offer: Stay now, pay later 'Ghostbusters' rocks the video game world Local scene: Production coordinator pushes Tucson localesNow playing: locally made studio films'40 Under 40' will celebrate Tucson's top professionals

Sales and Marketing
Everready Glass
Sales Reps Health Care
Dependable Health Services
Physical Therapists Health Care
Sierra Tucson
Eating Disorders Program Coordinator Construction
West-Press
Printing Health Care
CENTRAL ARIZONA COLLEGE
DIRECTOR OF HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT Finance and Accounting
Charles E. Gillman Company
Accounting Specialist Administrative & Professional
Tucson Urban League
CEO/President

"Tropic Thunder" promises a nonstop hailstorm of ribald comedy, but it only delivers scattered cloudbursts.

Starring, directing and assisting with the screenplay, Ben Stiller is out to satire Hollywood and all its hokey conventions. With his comedic frag grenades, Stiller lobs bombs at egotistical method actors, stand-up comics who make detestable gross-out comedies and self-obsessed filmmakers who indulge their personal quirks at the expense of their colleagues.

The film starts with an ingenious prologue: a sequence of trailers for made-up movies featuring each of the characters in the movie-within-a-movie. Oscar-baiting Aussie Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.) pops up in an Oscar-baiting thematic knockoff of "Brokeback Mountain." Fading action star Tugg Speedman (Stiller) languishes in the umpteenth sequel to one of his franchises. Bloated comic Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) stars in several simultaneous roles (à la Eddie Murphy) in a flatulence-inspired comedy. Also, rapper Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) gets jiggy in a commercial promoting his energy drink, "Booty Sweat."

The movie proper starts in Southeast Asia, on the set of the mega-budget, Vietnam conflict rehash titled "Tropic Thunder." In-over-his-head British director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) can't control his wily cast. Speedman — coming off a critical and commercial failure in which he played a mentally disabled character in an art film — is intimidated by Lazarus, who has undergone a pigment-changing procedure to play a black soldier.

The astoundingly talented Downey, continuing the recent resurgence he started with "Iron Man," treads perilously close to the territory of race-baiting offensiveness. However, he keeps his clueless thespian just innocently likable enough to elicit chuckles rather than groans. Refusing to break character even when the camera stops rolling, Lazarus spins a wicked web of dated stereotypes that alienate him from everyone else, particularly Chino. So deep into the character is Downey that when Lazarus stops his act, he's got an Australian accent.

If only the tepid script and the supporting performances were up to Downey's standard. Stiller is at his best as a weak-willed everyman, and he just isn't the right casting choice for an action hero. Stiller would have done better to call up a Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal — both of whom could surely use the work. Either could have given the role some true meat and authenticity.

At the insistence of the burly war hero (Nick Nolte) who wrote the book on which the film is based, the director takes the production to a real war zone without telling the actors what's going on. As Lazarus and Speedman struggle for command, they base their judgments on battle techniques they've learned from movies. The squad marches into combat, assuming the bullets they're firing are blanks and the men they're fighting are extras.

There's potential here for a memorable satire, but jarring tonal shifts edge the comedy off-track. Stiller can't seem to decide whether he wants to make a comedic send-up of action films or a war thriller that succeeds on its own merits. The result is a jumbled mess that has you laughing in spurts, then hanging back in your seat waiting through minutes of dead space filled with nonsensical explosions.

Tom Cruise steals what's left of the film with his out-of-nowhere performance as a bald, obscenity-spewing studio head with a penchant for hip-hop dancing. You half wonder what drew Cruise to the role, but it becomes pretty obvious — had Cruise declined the part, Stiller probably would have mocked him mercilessly in the movie. It's easy to imagine Murphy or Russell Crowe watching the movie with steam flowing out of his ears.

Stiller fanatics will eat up "Tropic Thunder," but those lured in by the hype will be crushed, walking out of the theater afterward in a buzz of thunderous grumbling.