I Love You, Man/In The Loop

A comedy double bill this week, one from here and one from there.

I LOVE YOU, MAN (Dir. John Hamburg)

When you've been bombarded with so many fratboy mancoms as we have in recent times, I couldn't help but wonder whether I could stand another beer-stained, tea-bagged coming-of-maturity adventure such as this offering from new writer/director combo John Hamburg and Larry Levin. Humped from the pages of the book of Apatow, 'I Love You, Man' offers all the same ingredients as films such as 'Knocked Up' and 'Forty Year Old Virgin', as well as a lot of the same actors, and relishes in the same snappy dialogue and references to cultural iconography.

Peter Klaven, played by Paul Rudd, is asked by his new fiance to find himself a best man for their wedding, and so sets about going on a series of man-dates until he finally finds himself developing a beautiful, blossoming bro-mance with the spirited, spontaneous, freedom-loving Sydney Fife, played by Jason Segel. The film works simply as a series of sketches, strung together by a few continuing jokes and some excellent improvisation by the two lead actors. Rudd, especially, has a wonderful gift for spitting out hilariously awkward dialogue, especially in his persistent failure when trying to find suitable nicknames for his new friend; "See you later...Jobin...I don't even know what that means. I'm sorry. I just called you Jobin. That's stupid."

The story is relatively novel, and is quite touching up until the point where you realise, as you do quite often in these sorts of films, that things were actually considerably better for everyone before they met, and no amount of soul-searching and honesty is going to reverse the fact that Sydney has essentially turned Peter into a student. It's like a primordial step back, and in fact Peter was a far more functional and likeable person when he was spending his time with the intelligent and articulate women around him. Meeting Sydney has acted in the same way that Guinness does, if you believe their recent "world going backwards, ooh look at the effects" advertising campaign.

With little of real substance contained within the simple story self-discovery, it is not a film that will ever win any awards, but it is actually supremely enjoyable, and with the performances from Rudd and Segel, along with some fine support from comedy heavyweights such as J.K. Simmons and Jon Favreau, it is a comfortable addition to the genre, and better even than much of the mindless ego-vehicles that Apatow and Rogen have, and will surely continue to produce for as long as the money is coming in.

IN THE LOOP (Dir. Armando Iannucci)

Many people would have been very happy to find out that The Thick Of It, the superbly satiric and disgustingly over-looked television comedy of recent years, was being translated and transformed for the big screen. I was certainly one of them, and was pleased to see that Iannucci had remained in control of the project, having done such a marvellous job on the original series.

What was so good about the original series is still there - the relentlessly aggressive, visceral dialogue, the superbly biting put-downs, the chaotic insanity and incompetence of the British political system and the characters therein - but Iannucci, in an effort, no doubt, to make the story seem more cinematic, has set a lot of the action in the second half of the film stateside, in Washington DC, and written new roles for Downing Street's transatlantic counterparts. Full of back room dealings, last-minute PR cover-ups and the kind of back-stabbing and betrayal that wouldn't look out of place on the set of Mean Girls, this is a superbly frank revealing of the true nature of some of our countries' most influential and powerful figures, and relishes the opportunity to portray everyone involved in the system as bumbling, disloyal, inherently depraved animals.

The performance of choice, as it did in the television series, comes from Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker, a character supposedly sculpted very closely on one Mr Alistair Campbell, a foul-mouthed rottweiler who struts around the screen as if he were sultan, spitting goblets of disdain and hatred on almost everybody in his path. At one point, very early on in the film, Tucker is confronting serial rabbit-in-the-headlights Simon Foster, played excellently by Tom Hollander, and is interrupted by Judy and a new arrival Toby, played respectively and with great talent by Gina Mckee and Chris Addison. Malcolm turns to Toby and in a wonderful moment that sets the tone for much of the film, spits venomously "Hey, foetus boy, lesson one. If I tell you to fuck off, what do you do?" to which Toby replies, rather meekly "Er...'F' off?". "You'll go far," Malcolm responds, "now fuck off." And so he does. And the film continues in much the same vain.

I found myself grinning from ear to ear for almost the entirety of this film, gleefully relishing the hilarity of the dialogue and the situations. As the story moves to the States it loses some of its bite and the red leather and mahogany that is such a wonderfully shadowy and grandiose backdrop to the British scenes is replaced by cold glass and clean steel, the bitterness and anger of the early humour replaced something more conniving and sneaky, a little more slapstick, a little less clever. However this only goes to show the pressures placed on the show in wanting to make a step up to the big screen, and despite any fault that one might find in this being an inherently televisual story, Iannucci has still drawn a brilliantly unflinching, take-no-prisoners picture of a wretched system, one in which politics itself is the true enemy; a vapid, disloyal and corrupt machine lined with greasy and incompetent parts. I, for one, am voting for this come election time, and would happily knock down doors to get your vote too.