In The Loop

You’ll laugh. You’ll laugh some more. Then you’ll stop.

You’d be forgiven for feeling a bit down in the current climate- if only because people keep using the term ‘current climate’. Surely a film that’s being trumpeted as the best British comedy in years will cheer you up though, won’t it? Well, yes- and no.

In The Loop is without a doubt one of the funniest films I’ve seen in a long time. It features much of the cast (playing very similar characters) of director Armando Iannucci’s biting political satire The Thick of It, including Peter Capaldi’s Begbie-meets-Blackadder-with-more-swearing Malcolm Tucker.

They’re given a razor-sharp, quote-a-second script that Iannucci clearly had a lot of fun writing with a handful of other cult British comedy writers, including Jesse “Peep Show” Armstrong. They’re given the likes of James Gandolfini and Tom Hollander as (relative) straight-men. And Iannucci films the whole thing in the hand-held documentary style that’s in danger of being overused, but that worked for The Thick of It, and certainly works here.

But what’s it all about? Ah, now we come to the reason why In The Loop won’t cheer you up. The plot follows government officials and advisers in their behind-the-scenes efforts to promote or prevent a war that the US President and the British Prime Minister are cooking up in the Middle East. Sound familiar? Then you won’t mind if I tell you that, after much shouting, swearing and ‘amending’ of intelligence in London and Washington, war is declared.

The characters are so caught up in their verbal sparring, career-preserving and running around the corridors of power that they never stop to think about what they’re doing, and we’re so carried away by the constant stream of hilarious hyperbole that we don’t either.

But while most of the characters carry on as if nothing has happened, when the laughter stops we’re left thinking: this is how we went to war with Iraq. That’s what makes this a satire to rank alongside Dr Strangelove, and that’s why it’s rather depressing.

Of course, Blair and Bush have gone, but since, as Iannucci has said, “we deal mainly with state department underlings, the kind of people that actually make decisions with enormous political consequences", it makes you wonder how much things have really changed.