MALCOLM (PETER CAPALDI) MAKES A STRONG POINT TO TOBY (CHRIS ADDISON) IN IN THE LOOP

War of words

Overpraised due to a lingering hunger here and in England to see our leaders skewered for their muddleheadedness, slavishness to the media, and rush into the Iraq war, this nonetheless hilarious and verbally inventive spinoff from the BBC series "The Thick of It" expanded to a more grandiose scale is not overtly about Iraq or realistically about the run-up to that war but a playful satire hinting at same, and more focused than anything else on political contortions of language and internecine bullying in the corridors of British and American power.

This is farcical and blithely unrealistic stuff, and it's the collaboration of two Scots with Italian names, director Armando Iannucci and star Peter Capaldi. As usual with a feature spun off a TV situation comedy this feels blown out, and despite an air of urgency and apocalyptic rage (Capaldi is good at seeming about to have a coronary) there is no significant plot line leading to decisive government action.

Central to the action, such as it is, are the vague adjectives and metaphors the media jump upon that can cause policies to shift or heads to roll, more often the latter, especially when an Alpha Male communications officer runs amok in the Prime Minister's office. But that verbiage can cause mole hills to morph into mountains via pure chance rather than calculation may be just an improv comedy crew's wishful thinking. When Donald Rumsfeld said "stuff happens" (the title of English playwright David Hare's realistic and detailed depiction of UK-US cooperation in the Iraq war run-up) or when Condaleeza Rice said "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," they knew very well what they were doing.

The central character of this film and co-creator of it and of "The Thick of It" is Peter Capaldi, whose incredibly rude, profane and domineering Downing Street Communications Director/spin doctor is loosely based on former Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief strategizer, Alastair Campbell (see Stephen Frears' The Queen). Capaldi's character, Malcolm Tucker, freely orders around cabinet ministers, or weak ones, anyway, and the plot takes off when such a minister, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) messes up at the end of an interview about dysentery in Africa by replying to an unrelated question about war that it's "unforeseeable."

When he hears this Malcolm Tucker goes ballistic because he thinks the word undermines the Government's determinedly neutral stand. If anything Tucker's colorful rage only pushes Simon Foster into the limelight, and asked to clarify his statement, the bumbling junior minister babbles, "in order to walk the road of peace sometimes we have to be ready to climb the mountain of conflict." This goes over very well with US administration hawks such as Rumsfeld-like Linton Barwick (David Rasche), who again is a man who likes to be fussy about words, and is snidely condescending about doing so.

In the Loop's rich ironies and (and its appeal, especially in the US) lie especially in the invective and profanity, the sub rosa, behind the scenes talk that prevails among the Alpha Males of government and that we know from the Nixon tapes.

Another important theme is political infighting, and Simon Foster's own managerial communications director Judy (Gina McKee) is very angry at the criticism she's suffered from Tucker. Her rival is Foster's new young aide and political adviser Toby (Chris Addison). The gamesmanship ramps up several notches and sexual farce is added when Foster is packed off to DC. There, we find a melting down female US government officer, assistant secretary for diplomacy Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy) with a young female aide who is allied politically with a Colin Powell-like dovish General Miller (James Gandlofini). Linton Burwick's aide Chad (Zach Woods) is out to savage Clarke's, the dovish Liza (Anna Chlumsky), who happens to be a college flame of Toby's. Chad scores some very palpable verbal hits against Liza, while nonetheless often appearing a fool. And to tangle the plot even more neatly, Karen and General Miller had a thing once too.

All these ties, rivalries, and hostilities are useful for generating farcical interchanges and scene shifts, but again, not so good for developing a drama about affairs of state.

This being after all a British comedy (despite spending a lot of time Stateside), Simon Foster's provincial district helps establish further comedic context and the ineffectual minister is further deflated (while ironically retaining his war policy status through his verbal gaffes) when in his Northhampton constituency a well-disguised Steve Coogan nearly brings him down over a crumbling wall, which Coogan's character claims is Foster's neglected responsibility. This gets publicized and Tucker decides to use it to send Foster packing in the PM's name.

Finally In the Loop can be reduced to a mass of invective, intrigue, and horseplay. The plot twists are amusing, but none of it would matter much without an almost Shakespearean gift for language dominated by Peter Capaldi's skill at expletive-laden put-downs -- a largely improvisational shtick he also displayed as the father of the lovable loser/sad sack Bristol schoolboy Sid (Mike Bailey) in the BBC series "Skins," where he really does have a coronary and sits dead in the living room after an evening of bliss. In the Loop is good fun and brilliantly inventive as sheer tangled plotting and nasty verbiage, but it's somehow being greeted as the second coming of high British cinema -- a slight exaggeration. Still, for devotes of English comedy and political satire, it's certainly highly welcome.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.