You spin me right round baby right round (In The Loop (DVD))

Member Name: hogsflesh

Product:	In The Loop (DVD)
Date:	03/09/09 (70 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very funny

Disadvantages: Not quite as good as the TV version

A review of the Optimum Home Entertainment DVD, which will set you back about £13 at the moment.

The only new comedy series that I've really enjoyed over the last few years has been The Thick Of It, a BBC sitcom made by a Scotsman with an Italian name (Armando Ianucci) and starring a Scotsman with an Italian name (Peter Capaldi). It was about a bumbling cabinet minister, and its notional star was Chris Langham. The real star of the show, though, was Capaldi as the nightmarish spin doctor Malcolm Tucker.

Langham downloaded some things he really shouldn't have, so the series went on hiatus (there is a new series due, without Langham). But this film version, released this year, has unleashed Malcolm Tucker onto a wider stage. In the run-up to a Middle Eastern war, Tucker has to provide the US state department with intel it can sell to the UN to justify an invasion. Meanwhile a bumbling cabinet minister, Simon Foster, puts his foot in it in an interview, and gets sucked into a political maelstrom. You don't need to have seen the series to appreciate the film.

Normally when you see a British comedy made with lottery funding you quite rightly make a mental note to avoid it and simply move on. In The Loop, though, is a seriously classy film that, like its TV version, makes a serious point in the funniest way possible. It exposes the spin, the empty machismo, the self-interest and the hideous weakness at the heart of the Blair government. It's also consistently laugh-out-loud funny - it's like Yes, Minister, only much, much nastier, and with a great deal more swearing.

The wonderful thing about it is that if the emphasis was changed ever so slightly it would be an unbearably intense drama. Ianucci cites Dr Strangelove among his influences, and it has that same quality. This is a subject that isn't funny at all - morally bankrupt governments taking their countries to war on a platform of lies - but turning it into a comedy makes it much more interesting than playing it straight.

It's all shot in the kind of wobbly pseudo-documentary style made popular by The Office. We feel like we're eavesdropping on real environments. The sets are amazing, to the extent that I was very surprised to learn that bits of it weren't shot on location. It looks and feels convincing (although I'd perhaps have expected the US State Department to have slightly bigger offices).

The situations also seem very real. Scenes like the one where a minister tries to convince himself that it's somehow braver to stay in his well-paid job than to resign on a point of principle really strike a chord (I hope Clare Short sees this). It's easy to imagine slightly toned down versions of incidents from the film really happening, and I'd imagine a lot of it comes from real anecdotes.

The acting follows the fake documentary style. The excellent cast includes Tom Hollander as the perpetually confused minister, Gina McKee as his press secretary, and many familiar faces from The Thick Of It, all playing their regular characters, but usually renamed. Chris Addison is particularly good as Toby, the unscrupulous and slightly naive new boy. Paul Higgins is magnificent as Jamie, Tucker's frightening Scottish henchman. Only Steve Coogan feels a bit out of place as a troublesome constituent bugging Hollander.

The Americans are headed by James Gandolfini as an anti-war general. It's strange seeing him in something other than The Sopranos (and especially hearing him without a New Jersey accent). There's a great scene where he and Malcolm face off against one another in a bar, a fat guy and a thin guy hissing at each other with barely suppressed rage (I'll bet that scene was included purely because someone asked who'd win in a fight between Tony Soprano and Malcolm Tucker). Anna Chlumsky is also very good as a junior official, and very cute too. Is it wrong to hope that her career nosedives so she has to start doing porn to pay the bills? Yes, I suppose it is.

But the star of the show is Peter Capaldi. Tucker is the finest comic creation of recent years, a swearing, unscrupulous demon of a man, who obviously relishes every outburst of bullying venom, every misogynistic put-down. Amazingly, he's made human through small details (like the children's paintings pinned to his office wall) and the brilliance of Capaldi's performance. The film never resorts to the kind of maudlin look-we're-sensitive-really moments that made the TV version of MASH unwatchable, but just occasionally you actually feel sorry for Malcolm. Even the most horrible man in the universe has feelings.

Most of the humour is down to the dialogue - there are one or two bits of characters-running-around business, but they're not that funny. Like the series, the film does a great line in bizarre analogies (my favourite was when Malcolm described something as 'lurking outside like a big hairy rapist at a coach station'). There is a lot of swearing in this film (seriously, a *lot*, including the Very Bad Word that begins with a c). But it's so over-the-top that it loses its meaning. And it's damn funny. I loved Gandolfini calling Capaldi a 'poodlef***er', and I really loved Jamie's views on opera ('It's just vowels. Subsidised foreign f***ing vowels'). But if you're squeamish about swearing, obviously don't watch this.

It's not quite as good as The Thick Of It; I don't think the format suits being stretched to almost two hours. That's what stops this from being a five-star film. But what with In Bruges and this, I've now seen two British comedies in the last year that actually made me laugh, and I can honestly say that I didn't expect that to happen.

The DVD has little interviews with some of the cast (not the Americans, sadly) and Ianucci. The same people also do a good commentary on the film, which they obviously enjoy. Best of all, there's almost half an hour of extra scenes that were cut, and they're all funny - for a film to be able to discard this much good stuff is impressive. The edition I got also had some postcards included. I think they're exclusive to HMV, but I wouldn't go out of your way.

You definitely should see In The Loop. It made me laugh so much it hurt a couple of times. Roll on the next series.

Summary: A very sharp British satire