Last week I ranted against the foolish, adolescent antics of movies like Pineapple Express, so I feel a little sheepish saying that I liked the new Ben Stiller film, Tropic Thunder. This movie, while containing more gratuitous violence and almost certainly more profanity, has a better, smarter story with an awesome ensemble cast coincidentally overlapping with regulars from the Apatow-Rogen camp.

The story, originated in the mind of Ben Stiller, follows a band of actors trying to make a war movie who end up, unbeknownst to them, getting mixed up in some real-life battle in the jungles of Vietnam. This fictional movie is supposed to be based on a book, Tropic Thunder, written by a veteran soldier, Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), who led a group of soldiers in a secret mission to retrieve a rogue soldier (Apocalypse Now!, anyone?).

The studio wants to shut down production on Tropic Thunder because it's over budget and the rookie director (played by Steve Coogan) is having trouble handling his prima donna actors. In an effort to save the movie, Four Leaf suggests that he and the director shoot the movie guerrilla style, setting up hidden cameras all over the jungle and letting the actors loose. Of course, things go awry and the local militia cause trouble.

It's a simple setup that blatantly references the real-life production fiasco of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now! in the late '70s, but Tropic Thunder never steals from Apocalypse per se. It definitely integrates similar scenes in its story, but it plays out more like homage and humorous reference. And while the story's basic framework references Apocalypse, the actual meat of the movie is a different animal altogether.

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