I feel like I want to go back to college and write a thesis on the movie. There's so many layers, so much depth to each character, so much to laugh at/with. And the first time I saw it I had no idea that was Tom Cruise.
Someone help me out here. There are multiple levels to the film: It's a movie, of course, about making a fictional movie which happens to actually be the movie. Which is based on a book which turns out to be all lies, written by a completely fake Vietnam vet who actually turns out to be a hero at the end of the day. It has a play within the movie of a fake movie within the movie.
There's a white Australian acting as a black American. There's a super masculine rapper who's actually homosexual or bi. There's Jack Black. And Tugg Speedman is every over the hill action hero as acted by Ben Stiller, who wrote and directed the movie.
I can't think of any comedy that has this many oars in the water, so to speak, both comedically, satirically, and also as a mockery of Hollywood itself.