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The documentary “Hearts of Darkness” is about the struggles of filming the great Vietnam war movie “Apocalypse Now.” Ben Stiller’s “Tropic Thunder” plays like that doc’s nightmare. A troupe of actors, under the impression they’re making a Vietnam war movie, wanders dangerously in the jungle and is captured by a gang of druglords who think the actors are narcs.

The movie is a send-up of Hollywood, actors, acting, agents, directors, writers, rappers, trailers and egos, much enhanced by several cameo roles, the best of which I will not even mention. You’ll know the one, although you may have to wait for the credits to figure it out.

All but stealing the show, Robert Downey Jr. is not merely funny but also very good and sometimes even subtle as Kirk Lazarus, an Australian actor who has won five Oscars and has surgically dyed his skin to transform himself into a black man. So committed is he to this role that he remains in character at all times, seemingly convinced that he is actually black.

This exasperates his fellow actor Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), a rapper who was born black and blasts Lazarus for his delusions. Alpa Chino (say it out loud) is like many rappers and promotes his own merchandise, notably Booty Sweat, an energy drink that keeps him going in the jungle. If Chino doesn’t buy the Lazarus performance, Lazarus is critical of Tugg Speedman (Stiller), who also starred in “Simple Jack,” a movie about a mentally challenged farmer who thinks animals can understand him.

Ironically, it is this role that saves their lives when they’re taken prisoner. The bored druglords have only one video, an old “Simple Jack” tape, and think Speedman is Jack himself. In a brilliant comic riff by Downey, Lazarus critiques Speedman’s work as over the top: The really big stars, he observes, “never go full retard” when playing such roles.

The movie opens with trailers establishing three of the characters — not only Lazarus and Speedman, but Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) whose specialty is fart humor. Portnoy is a heroin addict who is in withdrawal for much of the trek through the jungle, and has a funny scene after he begs to be tied to a tree and then begs to be set loose.

The set-up involves the actors, director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) and burnt-out screenwriter Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte) in the jungle with a huge crew and explosives expert Cody (Danny McBride). When one of the explosions goes off prematurely (think the opening of “The Party”), Speedman, acting as producer, fires the crew and announces he will direct the movie himself. He explains that hidden cameras have been placed in the jungle and will record everything that happens. Uh, is that possible, especially when they get lost? These actors, even the five-time Oscar winner, almost seem to believe so, a tribute to their self-centered indifference to technical details.

Intercut with the jungle scenes are Hollywood scenes featuring an agent and a studio executive. The movie, written by Justin Theroux, Stiller and Etan Cohen, is familiar with the ordeals of filmmaking and location work, and distills it into wildly exaggerated scenes that have a whiff of accuracy. Especially interesting is the way the director, Damien Cockburn, leaves the picture, which perhaps reflects the way some actors feel about some directors.

The movie is, may I say, considerably better than Stiller’s previous film, “Zoolander” (2001). It’s the kind of summer comedy that rolls in, makes a lot of people laugh and rolls on to video. It’s been a good summer for that; look at “Pineapple Express.” When it’s all over, you’ll probably have the fondest memories of Robert Downey Jr.’s work. It’s been a good year for him, this one coming after “Iron Man.” He’s back, big time.
 

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'Star Wars: The Clone Wars'

Christopher Ciccone (with Wendy Leigh)

Simon & Schuster, 352pp

Review by LEE RANDALL, The Scotsman

The Tyranny of Good Intentions

Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton

Three Rivers Press, 2008

264 pages (paperback), $16.95.

The problem with stoner comedies, it seems to me, is not so much the content as the viewing conditions.

In a perfect world, herbal humor would be enjoyed in a theater converted into a giant bong, where chronic doses could be wafted to willing nostrils via the ventilation system. Unfortunately, such far-sighted cinema is limited by cost and legal concerns.

Which leaves us at a disadvantage appraising movies like Pineapple Express, where it's clear that the tokers onscreen are having a far better time than we sober judges in the seats.

Whatever is in the titular bud that Seth Rogen and James Franco are inhaling – Pineapple Express weed is described as so rare and so good, smoking it is like "killing a unicorn" – their enjoyment of it is almost selfish, since they're getting laughs that we are denied. (This goes in spades for the nod to Reefer Madness that opens the film, which looks like a bad YouTube video that escaped from cyberspace.)

This being the latest issue from the Judd Apatow giggle factory, however, you need not worry about being locked into one style of yuks. Apatow is big on hybrid humor, and so apparently is his unlikely directorial disciple David Gordon Green, who normally makes the type of grim indie dramas that win raves at Sundance and then head straight for the discount-DVD bins.

Pineapple Express is both a stoner laugher and a bloody crime satire about dueling drug lords and crooked cops. The body count is large and the violence is quite nasty, which means that while you're getting high on life you could also be brought low by scenes of seriously gratuitous violence. Harold and Kumar busted out of Guantanamo Bay with far less mayhem.

Luckily, Franco's character Saul is one of those sweet summer discoveries that makes you willing to forgive the film's many flaws. He's a sleepy-eyed Socrates in striped pants, the kind of guy who looks danger in the eye and offers it a beer, some bud or an out-there bromide. He's consistently hilarious and worth the price of admission.

Saul dispenses drugs to Rogen's Dale, a process server whose brazen methods are at odds with his relatively conservative demeanor. He's most comfortable in a tie, and even when he's as glazed as a doughnut, he still frets about getting into trouble.

A justifiable concern, because while enjoying a private pharmaceutical moment in a parked car, Dale witnesses a messy mob hit by psycho drug lord Ted Jones (Gary Cole), in cahoots with bad cop Carol Brazier (Rosie Perez).

Dale is so rattled by this that he beats a hasty and noisy retreat, flipping his incriminating Pineapple Express roach to the ground as he squeals away.

In one of the most imaginative uses yet of a movie MacGuffin, the weed's uniqueness lets Jones trace it back to delightful doper Saul, and the chase is on.

Pity similar invention isn't exhibited in the rest of the film, which gets bloodier as the chuckle count plummets. Apatow and Green introduce yet another major subplot, involving Dale's high school girlfriend Angie (Amber Heard), that could be a movie unto itself.

Angie is more mature than Dale, even though she's younger than him. Her uptight parents (a well-cast Ed Begley Jr. and Nora Dunn) don't approve of Dale, especially when he gets the family caught up in his mobster hijinks.

Hijinks that include the Rasputin-like behavior of Red (Danny R. McBride), Saul's dodgy chum, who is too stunned (or baked) to notice that a body full of bullets usually results in death. There hasn't been a corpse with this much personality since Shaun of the Dead.

As Pineapple Express floats to its frightfully violent end, it becomes all the more obvious Apatow and Green are just throwing whatever they can at the screen, to see what will get either a laugh or a grimace. More likely the latter, since you'll likely leave the theatre wondering if you saw a comedy or a Sam Peckinpah movie.

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W: Portrayal of Bush has Internet buzzing

George W. Bush gulping booze from a funnel. Sauntering into jail wearing a Yale sweatshirt. Dancing on a bar with a curvy blonde. Driving onto a lawn with a lit cigarette in one hand and crashing into a garbage can on the way. Berated by his father, and the two men nearly coming to blows.

This is the U.S. President Oliver Stone wants you to know. A trailer for W., a movie about how a young ruffian became leader of the free world, is now in circulation on the Internet and attracting the attention of moviegoers, political observers and film critics alike.

The film is scheduled to be released in mid-October, well before Mr. Bush clears out his desk in the Oval Office and just three weeks before the U.S. presidential election. After the filmmaker's controversial depictions of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, just how Mr. Stone will portray the current president, and how accurately, is piquing interest across the political spectrum.

"It's impossible to tell from [the trailer] whether this is a trashing of Bush or a story of redemption, or both," said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

The trailer shows scenes of a young Mr. Bush, played by Josh Brolin, gambling and partying while his father, played by James Cromwell, dresses him down over his lack of ambition.

"If I remember correctly, you didn't like the sporting-goods job," the elder George Bush says. "Working in the investment firm wasn't for you either, or the oil rig job. You didn't exactly finish up with flying colours in the Air National Guard, Junior.

"What are you cut out for? Partying? Chasing tail? Driving drunk? Who do you think you are -- a Kennedy? You're a Bush. Act like one."

The tone of the trailer then shifts as Mr. Bush is shown in the White House, flipping through a file with his shoes on his desk as What A Wonderful World plays.

Mr. Stone, a supporter of Barack Obama, says the film is not an indictment of the Republican President.

" Indeed, Mr. Stone says Mr. Bush is to be admired for getting out from his father's shadow and the weight of the family name. "There's almost an Andy Griffith quality to him from A Face in the Crowd. If [F. Scott] Fitzgerald were alive today, he might be writing about him. He's sort of a reverse Gatsby."

Bush supporters may have difficulty with one scene depicted in the trailer, in which the younger Bush and his father nearly come to blows.

"You want an ass-whipping?" the elder Bush asks.

"Try it, old man," his son replies.

Rather than hating the movie, Republicans will be reminded why they like Mr. Bush, Mr. Brolin recently told the Los Angeles Times.

"It's not a political movie. It's a biography," the actor said. "People will remember that this guy is human, when we are always dehumanizing him, calling him an idiot, a puppet, a failed president. We want to know in the movie: How does a guy grow up and become the person he did?"

(In what is perhaps a case of art imitating life, Mr. Brolin was arrested last week after an alleged bar brawl in Shreveport, La., where the film has been shooting. Also arrested were several crew members and fellow actor Jeffrey Wright, who plays Colin Powell, the former U. S. secretary of state.)

Comments from other cast members, however, have been interpreted as poking fun at the Bush legacy --particularly one quip from Ellen Burstyn, who plays Barbara Bush. "I don't want to do an impression," she told Entertainment Weekly. "I just want to honour her voice, her stillness, and her hairstyle."

Regardless of how the film is ultimately received, political analysts agree W. should not hurt Republican John Mc-Cain's chances in the upcoming presidential election.

"I tend to see Stone as a very good propagandist, in a way, a very accomplished dramatist who uses real historical periods and figures to create oftentimes riveting films," said Mark Rozell, a political scientist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. "But I think for most Americans, it's entertainment."

"Bush is so low in the polls ... that I just don't think he can go lower," Prof. Sabato said. "With or without this movie, he was going to be a giant problem for McCain.

"And we have to remember that the people who go to see the movie are probably already included in the three-quarters who don't care for Bush."
 

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Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!