Well, I've avoided this for nearly two decades since its release, armed with the well-founded belief that anything involving the 'Frat Pack' will be squarely aimed at the lowest-brow common denominators of humour, such as farts. Of course all countries have their own localised equivalents, but none have the massive backing of the Hollywood machine or universal power of American celebrities behind them.
So it was with some wariness that I approached this, and was pleasantly surprised at an actual innovation at the start: three false beginnings before the standard opening credits, each a trailer for a terrible film in a different genre: Ben Stiller in the latest instalment of an action hero franchise, Jack Black in a comedy about a fat family that, yes, just farts, and Robert Downey Jr. in a blindingly obviously Oscar bait drama.
Then on to the actual film, and all three are ficionalised primadonna versions of themselves, shooting a Platoon rip-off Vietnam war film, which naturally soon goes horribly wrong and they find themselves in a real struggle to survive. This is a pity, particularly because Downey Jr.'s character's ludicrously OTT method acting has to be pushed aside by the demands of turning it all into just another gross-out action comedy. Oh well, marks for at least having tried.
6/10
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