A loud, bombastic, unrepentant, and often hilariously vulgar comedy about a massive war-movie production run amok in Southeast Asia, Ben Stiller’s film is the very thing that it’s mocking, which makes it difficult to discern where the intended laughs end and the unintended ones begin. Like virtually all Hollywood satires, Tropic Thunder makes mincemeat of the movie industry’s narcissistic excesses while reveling mightily in its own, and that tendency seems all the more extravagant given the film’s enormous budget and spectacular effects (although its greatest effect is Robert Downey Jr.’s hilariously spot-on portrayal of a white Aussie Oscar-winner going blackface and losing his identity). (Hollywood Jewel 16, Waco, TX)