editorlisa

caro:

In keeping with my attempt to provide short recaps of book and movie consumption habits, I should probably get to this one.  Somewhere smack in the middle of Internet Week I found the time to get to a screening of the London-meets-Washington comedy In The Loop, which was very appropriately hosted by John Oliver at the Soho House screening room. (Thanks to Kate for inviting me.)

It started off a bit slowly, or perhaps that was just me getting acclimated to the whole British comedy thing. In The Loop ultimately falls nicely into the camp of “political comedies where you must be very attuned to the dialogue in order to find it funny, and do not take friends to see it if you suspect they may be stupid.”  I thought it was hilarious once it got moving.  It did not descend into the “look, Americans are such idiots” muck that I’d feared it would.  Excellent dialogue (“You know they’re all kids in Washington?  It’s like Bugsy Malone, but with real guns.”)  James Gandolfini was very funny in a very un-Tony Soprano role.

Director Armando Iannucci described it thusly in the Huffington Post this spring:

The film was inspired by how over-excited Tony Blair got whenever he set foot in the Oval Office. In fact, it’s based on practically every British politician who comes to America and meets famous folk like Vice Presidents and Five-Star Generals and who can’t help but get star-struck, turning into nervously giggling 12-year olds at a Justin Timberlake concert who’ve just found themselves standing next to one of his roadies.

Anyway, I believe it’ll be in some sort of wider release next month. Highly recommended, but be forewarned: this is a “listen and be amused” movie, not a “sit back and watch the jokes get thrown at you” one.  Both, of course, have their merits.

It opens in theaters on July 24th (probably the IFC Center in NYC) and on IFC in Theaters on Demand July 15th.