| RATING: | 60% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
More comic wordplay than genuine social satire here in this simplistic anti-war comedy.
A Western political class depicted here regularly in meltdown is all good fun, but the film is as self-contained as the political elite satirized - and neither really understands the implications of its own actions. "Yes Minister" or "Dr. Strangelove" it is certainly not.
The relentless swearing is a good way of showing the political class in a state of continual panic over how they think the public perceives them, but the overt sex-references are rather too obvious. Both distract from the ostensible storyline; while offering no insights into the reason for their use by the characters: Sexual sublimation. The film simply uses them to attract the single entendre, gross-out crowd who would not normally attend such a would-be political satire. The documentary style adds nothing to the proceedings since the content is somewhat overblown and melodramatic – the two thereby conflict and cancel each other out. Moreover, the relentless Tarantinoesque cine-referenciality and trivial cultural references reveal the true lack of political substance here.
Some performances stand out. Gina McKEE, Peter CAPALDI, Zach WOODS & James GANDOLFINI. These are not trying too hard to make you laugh and so are correspondingly funnier than the rest. Yet, the most damning indictment of this movie is that there is no character differentiation since they all appear to have exactly the same sense of humor!
This movie is more busy than funny and is indicative of the fact that comedy produced by Whites is in deep crisis following the enervating effects of political correctness. Actually saying something potentially offensive (ie, true) is stridently avoided so that nothing of substance is actually being said; resulting either in clever wordplay – as here – or, worse, arrant surrealism.
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