In the Loop
Aug. 13th, 2009 03:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishArmando Iannucci (dir.), In the Loop
This is a comedy about going to war. Not war itself, but the process of getting there, through the eyes of British ministers and US State Department functionaries. In particular, it focuses on the naive and bumbling MP Simon Hunt, the vicious communications minister Malcolm Tucker, and Simon's new assistant Toby, with dozens of supporting cast members on both sides of the Atlantic.
It's very very funny. Lines like "I will marshal all the media forces of darkness to hound you to an assisted suicide" and "I am, however, going to have to read you excerpts from the Riot Act" pop up everywhere. (Many of the best lines are in the trailer, which I recommend unreservedly.) There's a bit of 'embarrassment comedy,' where the nominal amusement comes from watching people put in impossible situations, but it's kept to a minimum and manages to be genuinely funny.
It's also sort of a political thriller, with lots of double-crossing and manipulativeness. That part was still pretty well done, but felt a bit. . . off, towards the end. Alliances break and shift as the war planning lurches on, and careers are made and ruined. That part was. . . less funny, and more painful to watch.
Two scenes with Linton (the warmonger in the State Dept) in particular come to mind. In the first, he's altering the minutes of a meeting so that they reflect the "truth" of the situation; in the last, he's being an intensely control-freakish jerk for the sake of being a control freak. Both of those, but especially the last, pushed him from "amusing" over to "downright evil," and sort of broke past the "funny" part into "deeply uncomfortable."
Recommended if you're looking for a comedy that ends on a discomfiting note. Also, "Difficult, difficult, lemon difficult" has now entered my vocabulary.
(Wiki sez it's a spin-off of a BBC-TV series. I'm not sure if I want to see the series or not.)
This is a comedy about going to war. Not war itself, but the process of getting there, through the eyes of British ministers and US State Department functionaries. In particular, it focuses on the naive and bumbling MP Simon Hunt, the vicious communications minister Malcolm Tucker, and Simon's new assistant Toby, with dozens of supporting cast members on both sides of the Atlantic.
It's very very funny. Lines like "I will marshal all the media forces of darkness to hound you to an assisted suicide" and "I am, however, going to have to read you excerpts from the Riot Act" pop up everywhere. (Many of the best lines are in the trailer, which I recommend unreservedly.) There's a bit of 'embarrassment comedy,' where the nominal amusement comes from watching people put in impossible situations, but it's kept to a minimum and manages to be genuinely funny.
It's also sort of a political thriller, with lots of double-crossing and manipulativeness. That part was still pretty well done, but felt a bit. . . off, towards the end. Alliances break and shift as the war planning lurches on, and careers are made and ruined. That part was. . . less funny, and more painful to watch.
Two scenes with Linton (the warmonger in the State Dept) in particular come to mind. In the first, he's altering the minutes of a meeting so that they reflect the "truth" of the situation; in the last, he's being an intensely control-freakish jerk for the sake of being a control freak. Both of those, but especially the last, pushed him from "amusing" over to "downright evil," and sort of broke past the "funny" part into "deeply uncomfortable."
Recommended if you're looking for a comedy that ends on a discomfiting note. Also, "Difficult, difficult, lemon difficult" has now entered my vocabulary.
(Wiki sez it's a spin-off of a BBC-TV series. I'm not sure if I want to see the series or not.)