Hollywood has been feeding on itself a bit lately, with a string of comedies that parody its own predictable tendencies. "Scary Movie" sent up the slasher genre: "Team America" took on the jingoistic, kick-ass action movie; and "Meet the Spartans" speared "300," while also digressing into about a kazillion other pop-cultural references, very few of which were actually funny.
The most ripe target for the withering death ray of satire at the moment would seem to be the superhero movie: Their recent pomposity is practically begging someone to burst their bubble. But so far we have no takers.
Instead, the most recent chapter in movie piss-takes is Ben Stiller's "Tropic Thunder," which is some kind of meta-parody of the Hollywood war movie. Stiller, to his credit, goes well beyond just satirizing a few movies — "Platoon," "Apocalypse Now," "Rambo," and "Saving Private Ryan," to name but a few — to engage in a more general assault on the industry itself.