In 'Tropic Thunder,' that privilege was articulated via biting the Hollywood hand that fed him and telling the audience that it was getting what it deserved here, the privilege manifests itself in Stiller's ability to take a big film crew to Greenland, Iceland, and a relatively safe stand-in for Afghanistan to impart some vague, semi-earnest be-here-now bromides to the paying customers.

I'm doing this because I'm not entirely sure that my negative reaction isn't a sort of personal carry-over from Stiller's last directorial effort, the intermittently amusing but entirely smug and hateful ' Tropic Thunder.' From the opening credit sequence, featuring the tableau-like visuals that recall the work of Wes Anderson-for whom Stiller acted in the wonderful ' The Royal Tenenbaums'-my way of seeing the movie was circumscribed by the belief that what was being expressed/communicated was nothing much more than Stiller's own privilege. For all that, I'm giving the movie two stars, which, in star speak, translates to 'fair.' I'm not doing this as a sop to anyone who might end up charmed by the sometimes winsome and always self-help-book-like particulars of Stiller's romantic fable, which is can-do optimistic in rather stark contrast to Thurber's highly pessimistic mini-parable.

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