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Um, uh, Tropic Thunder is a great flick to watch while you are driving a vehicle with your family on a trip.

Particularly for those pesky late teens (16 or older, no younger) that sulk in the back of your family hauller.

This near-brilliant satire (for a big budget Hollywood Production) features what should be the best performance by an American actor of the past few years. It also features a career-boosting cameo for Tom Cruise as a fat, hairy Hollywood mogul.

It is Robert Downey Junior's performance as an "immersive" Australian that truly amazes however, and that makes Tropic Thunder the perfect movie for your teen-addled crew. The language is foul, the action is funny but intense and some subject matter is ostensibly offensive to people with special needs.

Ben Stiller is a satirist, however, and it's a pleasure to watch him film the hand that feeds him. If Johnathan Swift can suggest to the English to feed Irish babies to the locals as a cure for famine (I think I have that right) then Ben Stiller can certainly use Robert Downey's ridiculous character to intimate that compromises abound in Hollywood.

Tropic Thunder savages actors in a way that only a good satire can do. While I am still not sure whether mental impairement should be used to make a point, you should insist your older teenagers rip off their ipods and watch this movie for what it really is.

It might even get them to talk.

Don't laugh.