Starring Rainn Wilson, Christina Applegate, and Teddy Geiger
Directed by Peter Cattaneo
Rated PG-13

Robert "Fish" Fishman (Wilson) was the original drummer in Vesuvius, one of the biggest hard rock bands of all times. Because he didn't have the right look for the band, though, Vesuvius dumped him unceremoniously right as their journey to the top began to take off. It's not by chance that former Beatles drummer Pete Best has a cameo.

Fish has never been able to let it go; 20 years later, Vesuvius is one of the world's biggest bands and he's stuck working in a call center. But he sees his chance to live the rock n' roll life when his nephew's high school band needs a drummer for their first-ever gig at the prom. It's probably the first ever prom performance that included a lengthy drum solo in the middle of "In Your Eyes."

The band does slowly generate interest, though, in part because their songs are catchy and in part because Fish is the butt of the joke - literally - after video of him practicing naked winds up on the internet. I thought one of the biggest missteps in The Rocker was having this high school band, ADD, rise to the top of their vocation over summer break. There are ways to convey the same thing, particularly with a character who longs for any success, without having the band-on-tour montage and the shoot-their-video montage and the watch-them-go-up-the-charts montage.

I think Wilson shows a real gung ho attitude, even though the character is a little underwritten. He has become famous for playing one of the most unusual characters on television, but Wilson has not brought Dwight Schrute to his movie roles. With The Last Mimzy, his walk-on in Juno, and The Rocker, he has played entirely different characters; at least he's not Rob Schneider.

But the rest of the movie doesn't get out of its own way. Ironically, movies tend to tell the same kinds of stories over and over because audiences can connect with them, but we also stop connecting with movies when we sense they're getting lazy. The Rocker doesn't show us very much that's new. It tries to be funny about it, and when it works - SNL cast member Jason Sudeikis' blisteringly funny record label exec - it makes you wonder why the rest of the story is so passe.

And The Rocker is too keen on making you like everyone. With the exception of Vesuvius and the record executive, neither of which are around that long, the characters are too perfectly cut to be believed. So even though I appreciate where Wilson was heading with his deluded drummer in this, there will be no encore.

4 - Jackie Chan

3 - Mel Brooks

2 - Woody Allen

1 - Charlie Chaplin

I would've thought there would be more qualified triple threats, but we saw a lot of the same names: Kevin Smith, Zach Braff, Danny DeVito, Albert Brooks, Christopher Guest, Ben Stiller, Ron Howard...got a George Clooney vote, which is surprising because he's only made three movies, and the one outright comedy was not even funny. Harold Ramis' name came up, as did Rob Reiner's.

One of our loyal readers reminded me that in addition to Ben Stiller having a new film in theaters that he wrote, directed, and stars in, Woody Allen has a new film, too, although he doesn't make an appearance in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. So this list fit twice in one week!

Woody was always going to finish in second place, though. He's been too prolific - and let's face it, too good - to be any lower than he already is: 21 Academy Award nominations and three wins, and nearly a movie a year since the late 1960s.

However, there will never be another Charles Chaplin, arguably the first filmmaker to bring a delicate kind of poetry to directing, writing, and acting, often in the same film. Chaplin made Hitler funny...in 1940. And really, he's the yardstick for anyone who wants to write, direct, act, produce, and run a studio. And for anyone who wants to sleep with Randolph Hearst's mistress, but that's another story. That other story, by the by, reveals what "Rosebud" really means.

If Chaplin's first and Woody is second, then we've got to make room for Mel Brooks. True story: His crowning achievements, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, were released in the same year. How crazy is that? Two of the ten great comedies ever made, both co-written and directed by the same man, came out ten months apart? Both even received Oscar nominations in 1974, which is quite a feat.

I love when we get a pick that's completely out of the blue like this; I never would have thought of Jackie Chan on my own. However, there's no overestimating his importance to Chinese cinema and to American action films. Because of the available audience in his homeland, he's very likely the most successful movie star of all time. What sets Chan apart, and has for nearly 20 years, is the amount of comedy he typically throws into his action movies. His writing's not anything special, but his direction and his physical acting is as good as it gets in his genre. He's a true triple threat, and because of his disregard for his own safety, he's also a threat to himself a lot of the time.

We're not purposely overshadowing Buster Keaton with the presence of Chaplin, but that just tells you how great Chaplin was. In his own right, Keaton was wildly inventive and undeniably influential. His best work is concentrated in the 1920s, and he did not adapt well to changes in the industry or to rampant alcoholism, which sapped much of his creativity around the time of his greatest glory, 1927's The General.

Starring Bill Pullman, Alan Rickman, and Chris Pine
Directed by Randall Miller
Rated PG-13

Starring Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, and Javier Bardem
Directed by Woody Allen
Rated PG-13

Featuring the voices of Matt Lanter, James Arnold Taylor, and Samuel L. Jackson
Directed by Dave Filoni
Rated PG

Starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey, Jr.
Directed by Ben Stiller
Rated R

Very few movies have taken aim at the goose that laid the golden egg in a language your parents would readily understand, or your kids, for that matter. Part of that is to be expected, though; we’ve been taught to believe Hollywood movers and shakers have their own language, so we expect some inside jokes. But not many movies satirizing the motion picture industry have done so as completely or hilariously as Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder.

The beauty of this movie is that it would work with the same parts even without the daggers it constantly flings at the industry. Tugg Speedman (Stiller) is the world’s biggest fading action star. The world loved him in Scorcher, as the only man who could save the world from a cataclysmic climate change. By the time he starred in Scorcher VI, as the Earth was facing an ice age, the world didn’t love him nearly as much.

To change his image, Speedman took the role of a retarded stable boy in the weepy, Oscar-ready drama, Simple Jack, but the move and the movie backfired.

Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) has made his name as a flatulent comedian. You roll your eyes, but many have taken a similar road to success.

And then there’s Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), who might be the world’s greatest actor. He has five Academy Awards and to play the role of Sgt. Osiris in the movie Tropic Thunder, he undergoes a pigment change, the first step in his process of becoming “black” for the role.

For obvious reasons, these styles clash on set, overwhelming rookie director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan). Within five days, the most expensive war movie ever made, is already a month behind schedule. But Cockburn and the man whose experiences in Vietnam inspired the Tropic Thunder story, Sgt. Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), devise a plan to put the prima donnas out in the middle of the same Vietnamese jungle to shoot the movie “guerilla style.”

Things do not go according to what little plan there is and soon the three stars and two actors on their way up - the rapper Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) and quirky teen Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) - are facing a very real enemy, a gang of heroin dealers whose guns shoot real bullets. The actors, particularly Speedman, just think this is all part of the movie.

There aren’t many corners of the entertainment industry safe from Stiller’s broad-brush approach. Entertainment/tabloid shows, agents, actors, directors, studio hacks, award shows, trailers, product placement, budgetary waste, and especially executives are all shown no mercy in the script, which Stiller co-wrote with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen.

Those are the more obvious targets. However, Stiller, as director, has made his movie about the movie adhere to the same rules a $200 million war epic would. The musical cues are all exactly what you’d think they’d be, with “Sympathy for the Devil,” Steppenwolf’s “The Pusher,” and the great Motown protest songs, “Ball of Confusion” by the Temptations and “War.” Stiller uses more action than would ever really be necessary, just like a standard war movie, and the stunts, explosions, and effects would make this a convincing war epic, which is exactly what it wants to be. Well, kind of.

There have not been many funny movies this summer. Step Brothers is hysterical, but there’s absolutely no story, so it’s afforded the great luxury of doing whatever the hell it wants for a laugh. The edge goes to Tropic Thunder, which not only manages to make a point or two about the oblivious nature of Hollywood and those who breathe it in, but it underlines those points with some of the biggest laughs in a long, long time. 

The characters are perfectly devised and the performances hold nothing back. You may already have noted Downey’s otherworldly transition as something to watch for, but there is a cameo – in a movie filled with tremendous cameos – that gives Downey a run for his money. But I wouldn’t dare give that away here.