Wednesday, December 16, 2009

In The Loop

Here's a movie that not many of you have even heard of. Here's how I first heard of it.

I went to see a movie at The Albany Twin, which is a pretty small theater in Albany, watching another movie that not many of you have heard of (but I'm saving that movie for my top 10 list). While in the short line for tickets, the four or five people in front of me were all buying tickets for In the Loop, the other movie showing in that theater. There was a trailer for it as well. So I did some quick research at home and decided to check it out the next weekend.

I'm happy I did, and I can recommend it to many of you who I know read this. Basically, it's a British satire of war politics. So here's what you need to like to enjoy this movie.

1. British humor. I, for one, have a lot of trouble with sarcasm and dry humor. I don't use it or understand it. But you might like that sort of thing. There are a lot of good one liners and some pretty silly situations. This means you won't always be laughing out loud - you have to think about some of the humor. I know - thinkin' is hard!

2. Satire. Last year I wrote about Tropic Thunder and how too many people didn't like it. The general consensus seemed to be that too many people don't understand satire. In some movies, if you don't understand that the movie even is a satire, you can get the totally wrong impression. A couple examples are Starship Troopers (which Nolan recently wrote about here) and Observe and Report. This week I heard some kids talk about how they liked the movie because they wanted to be like Seth Rogan's character. They missed the point. They're eighth graders, so they do that often. In The Loop is the type of movie that one who doesn't understand satire won't understand it at all.

3. Political Humor. The basic plot of the movie is that a member of the British cabinet tells the press that a war with the middle east is unlikely, but that isn't the party platform. They must spend the movie correcting that mild error. A lot of it is about the relationship between politicians and the media. If you believe that the politicians you see on TV are real people and not the characters they play in government (with some exceptions, of course. I still believe there are some "good guys"), you won't get this movie.

1 comment:

Andrew Nolan said...

You have finally found a film I haven't heard of. I will give it a look.

Mr. Tilney! Have a care with my name. You will wear it out.

I'm not sure what to think about "Observe and Report" and was considering writing about it. I didn't think it quite worked, and it's even more disturbing that 8th graders want to be like Rogan's character.