Zola ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ Bear Blog

Review: ”<i>In The Loop</i>”

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Imagine "The Office" in political shape, if you will; the highest political level in Great Britain - bar the corporations. the lobbyists and Rupert Murdoch - where the Prime Minister is surrounded by people trying to help and scorn him at the same time - mostly the latter. The film involves the British politicals trying to avoid or attain war together with their American counter-parts through an assortment of ways during this quick-paced and extremely funny film. My comparison with "The Office" extends to using very similar embarrassing and highly painful scenes, e.g. mistakes being endured through silence and anger, somebody behaving in a way that is embarrassing to all except him/her, et.c.

The film seems based on "The Thick of It", a TV-series that I have not seen, using the same people in the film except for the Americans. In the film, James Gandolfini makes a funny appearence as an American general, Steve Coogan comes through as an angry, funny, navel-gazing bastard but really, Peter Capaldi steals it all through his performance as Malcolm Tucker, the angriest witty, political man in the world.

Peter Capaldi vs Chris Addison

Cinema Blend offers this quip on the film, which I find says a lot about the humor:

I love a movie that can put out a great line like, “Climb the mountain of conflict? You sounded like a Nazi Julie Andrews,“ and have it be number 114 on the list of the best lines of the movie. The problem is that the 113 lines from In the Loop that are funnier are so replete with “F***“, “s**t“, and “lubricated horse c**k,“ that I had to go way down the list to find one that could be written without **** in this review. This movie is one of the most foul-mouthed that I can remember. It's also incredibly funny and, if you're a tree-hugging liberal, it throws in a little anti-war satire to boot. Just remember turn on the subtitles, you'll thank me later.

At the end of it, I found myself missing the cast a little even though most of them were complete knobheads. Loveable knobheads, through all of their cowardice, trials, accomplishment, torment and utterly stupid action. This is a firm recommendation to all lovers of quick dialogue, humor in the darkest of times, insult-laden pop-culture references and anti-heroes.