Tropic Thunder: **1/2 (out of a possible **** stars)

I think it's safe to say that Robert Downey Jr's comeback is for real. After all his well publicized...incidents...of the last several years, I have to admit that I thought he was pretty much done. But then he came back as Iron Man, which - largely due to his performance - was the only movie of the year that could challenge The Dark Knight as the seasons best. And now he turns in this brilliantly comic turn as an award winning method actor who undergoes a controversial transformation to play a role he really had no business playing, and he refuses to let the character go even when it becomes clear the action surrounding him is no longer part of the movie. While not top billed, Downey is clearly the most memorable of the lead roles and serves as the saving grace for this hit and miss comedy that would have been mostly miss were it not for him. Ben Stiller plays the same character he has for every other movie he's ever done, and while he isn't bad, he isn't especially funny, either. Jack Black is pretty forgettable, which is ironic because he was supposed to be the comedic actor in the cast, yet he's probably the least funny of them all. Matthew McConaughy, Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan, and Tom Cruise do well in supporting roles. Women who think that Tom Cruise is hot should definitely see this film. As a fat, balding, bespectacled producer with a gutter foul mouth and almost ape-like hair covering his body, he finally gets to experiance life the way the rest of us always have. It's poetic justice, really.

One complaint though, is the pointlessly graphic violence and language that turned this into an R-rated film. It just didn't seem necessary. They could have cut back and made this PG-13 without losing any of the humor, and it probably would have been a bigger hit at the box office, too. One thing's for certain, though - without a doubt the best part of the movie was the fake trailers at the beginning, starring the characters from the film. The one with Robert Downey Jr and Toby McGuire as fellow priests dealing with...um...temptation...was absolutely priceless.