First things first. Let's get this whole controversy bit out of the way. Ben Stiller's Hollywood action satire, Tropic Thunder, has drawn the ire of a number of groups representing the mentally disabled. The offense is taken at a plot point which has Stiller's Tugg Speedman, an action hero desperate to be taken seriously, playing a character in the mold of Sean Penn's in I Am Sam. Speedman's performance in this past role is a ridiculously offensive (if comically well-intentioned) caricature of a developmentally challenged adult. He and his co-stars on his current feature, a gritty Vietnam War flick, refer back to his performance as "Simple Jack" using the word "retard." Seventeen times they use it, according to the also comically well-intentioned Timothy Shriver, who laments the frequent use of the "r-word" while the "n-word" is only used once. As if it might have been less egregious had there been more racial slurs.

Is it as offensive as they say? Of course not, but we're sure the producers would like to thank the protesters—about a dozen of whom were out in front of the Gallery Place theater last night for the opening—for the extra publicity. What Shriver and the rest of the naysayers seem to be missing—if, that is, most of them even bothered to watch the film before passing judgement—is a fact that is central to what makes Tropic Thunder so gut-bustingly funny: each and every one of the leads is a self-centered, insensitive prima donna, and the laughs are not at the expense of anyone with a disability, but rather at those in Hollywood who crassly strategize that exploiting disabilities through tear-jerking films about them is a fast track to poignancy and golden statues. It's a fine line to tread, but one that Stiller and co-writers Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen dance nimbly on for most of Thunder's fast-paced run.

The film, about a disparate group of actors brought together to make a glossy, pseudo-high minded war epic, sort of a Platoon crossed with Saving Private Ryan, opens brilliantly. Taking a page out of Grindhouse's book, a commercial and three fake trailers kick things off, telling the audience all it really needs to know about the leads via their previous work. Brandon T. Jackson is Alpa Chino, a rapper looking to break into acting, Jack Black parodies himself (and Eddie Murphy) as a fart-joke reliant fat comedian, Stiller is the aging action hero, and Robery Downey, Jr. a maddeningly pretentious Method actor so committed to living the character that he undergoes a medical skin pigmentation procedure in order to convincingly play a black man.

There are a lot of sacred entertainment industry cows being sent to the slaughter, and Stiller & co. skewer every stereotype with vicious glee. Steve Coogan plays the British theater director hired to his first studio film, who is woefully unprepared for the egos at play in combination with the big budget action. When the production appears to be headed toward excesses on par with Apocalypse Now, he decides to take the production into the jungle, guerrilla style, with just two other crew members in tow: the film's pyrotechnics director, whose attachment to explosions borders on fetish, and Nick Nolte, the grizzled vet who wrote the book on which the movie is based. Predictably, things go horribly awry for the four stars, plus the excellent Judd Apatow mainstay Jay Baruchel (Undeclared, Knocked Up), who is along for the ride as a starry-eyed and geeky young actor getting his first break. Lost in the jungle, they stumble upon a heroin operation led by a pint-sized warlord and all the proverbial action-movie hell breaks loose.

Hollywood hasn't released a self-satirization this biting since The Player. And while Thunder lacks the subtlety of the Altman classic, it more than makes up for it with a whipsmart intelligence buried in the bombast. Even in the film's climax, when most action comedies falter as they drop the comedy to bring things to an explosive and satisfying end, Thunder refuses to take itself seriously, and refuses to let up on mercilessly lampooning its protagonists. While this all keeps the laughs coming, it does reveal the film's greatest weakness: it's impossible to make any kind of connection with characters who are such broadly drawn (and largely unlikeable) caricatures. The role of reasonably sane audience proxy is mostly left to Baruchel, whose part isn't quite large enough to fully carry that weight. Also unfortunate is the last-minute casting of Matthew McConaughey as Speedman's ingratiating pretty-boy agent, Rick Peck. The role was quite obviously written for Owen Wilson, who pulled out following his apparent suicide attempt last year. McConaughey performs ably, but it's hard not to imagine the missing sardonic zing Wilson would have brought.

These are minor quibbles in a film that is so consistently entertaining. And even if all the rest had fallen flat, the price of admission is more than worth it to see a nearly unrecognizable Tom Cruise as the fat, balding, foul-mouthed, and disgustingly hirsute studio head overseeing the production from L.A. It's surely a role that any actor who's done as many top-floor dealings as Cruise has would relish, and he throws himself into it with a reckless abandon not seen since his maniacally misogynistic supporting role in Magnolia. If you thought it was too late for Cruise to rescue his career from himself, think again. He just needs to play irredeemable bastards more often. And if anyone should be offended by Tropic Thunder, it's the producers, actors, and directors at whom the film takes dead satiric aim. Films like Forrest Gump or Radio, that use disabilities to opportunistically manipulate, would be more appropriate subjects for offended anger from Shriver & co., and it's a point in Tropic Thunder's favor that Stiller is willing to call out his colleagues on this. Which will give you something to think about between gales of laughter.

Tropic Thunder is now playing most everywhere, including the Regal Gallery Place Stadium 14, the AMC Loews Georgetown 14, the Phoenix Theatres Union Station, and the AMC Mazza Gallerie.