But when a friend suggested going to see it, I thought it could be OK – and it was a tight-ass Tuesday anyway, so it’s not like I had to pay full price. And when I walked out of the cinema 2 hours later, some of my faith in comedy movies had been restored.

The story was pretty straightforward. A war movie set in Vietnam is behind schedule because of the male-diva stars. So the director decides that to get a real performance out of the actors, he’d drop them in the middle of the jungle and capture their emotions with hidden cameras. But things immediately go wrong and the actors soon find themselves in enemy territory and real danger. The plot doesn’t get any more complicated than that. Ben Stiller’s character Tugg Speedman eventually gets captured and the other actors attempt to rescue him.

This movie isn’t going to make you walk from the cinema with a different perspective on life. And despite being made during the middle-east conflict, there’s not even any deep messages about the futility of war or the value of human life.

What Tropic Thunder offers is some of the funniest scenes I’ve seen in a movie in a long long time. If good comedy is about delivering the unexpected, then many comedy movies fail for being far too predictable or clichéd. Looking at the plot as a whole, there’s nothing especially unpredictable about it. You know that all of the actors are bound to make it out alive.

But there are a handful of scenes that are just so unexpected and brilliant that you’ll laugh like a little kid. The scene when the director drops them off in the middle of the jungle is classic. Another favourite is when Speedman is attacked in the jungle in the middle of the night. Though I’d love to go on about these scenes, I don’t think that it’s worth risking spoiling them for someone who hasn’t seen the movie.

Stiller, Black and Downey Jr each bring their own style of comedy to the movie, and somehow it all manages to blend together well. I’ve haven’t seen Downey Jr in a comedy like this before, and even though he’s playing the “serious” actor beside Stiller’s blockbuster action star and Black’s Eddie Murphy-style comedy star, he has some of the funniest lines in the movie.

If you like a good laugh, get along to see it.

Rating: 8/10