Tropic Thunder

Ben Stiller’s 2008 film strands a pampered cast, halfway through a Vietnam picture, in a jungle where the enemies turn out to be real. The idea came to Stiller in 1987 on the set of Empire of the Sun, watching actors return from boot camp taking themselves far too seriously. A first draft dates from around the time of Zoolander. Etan Cohen wrote Kirk Lazarus to mock the far end of method acting; Robert Downey Jr. called the pitch the stupidest idea he had ever heard. He built the part as an amalgam of Russell Crowe, Colin Farrell and Daniel Day-Lewis, and sat in makeup up to two hours daily. The three fake trailers arrive before the story does. Stiller’s reason is that an audience will only sit so long before the plot has to start, so the characterisation is loaded up front. Turn up late and the later jokes lose their setup. The napalm blast was shot once on Kauai with twelve cameras running together: there was no second take. A good fit if you want the blackface kept as a running argument Brandon T. Jackson reopens on screen rather than a single gag. Not for anyone who cannot get past the Simple Jack material: more than twenty disability groups campaigned against that language and no scene was cut.