In the Loop (2009)

E his political satire is bursting with energy and, at times, with crackling dialogue. Hunger for power, incompetence, lack of respect for others, and betrayal are on full display. The movie had no problem keeping my interest, though it did lose my respect at times. The characters came across to me as fairly two-dimensional cardboard cutouts, and I was a little surprised to find they were exc=aptly the same way at the end. Maybe character growth is not needed in comedy, but a little more depth would have been great. I thought Gandolfini, Gina McKey and Mimi Kennedy came the closest to making their candidates real, but ultimately the script let them down. The Malcolm character was there at every turn to shout them down. The constant use of curse words reveals a lack of imagination, a lazy writer’s way of trying to titillate the audience. But when you hear the f-bomb every fifteen seconds, it loses all its shock value and exposes that lazy writing. So while the movie never lost me, it never really captured me either. I was just along for the ride.