Absolutely the worst movie.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Insanely funny movie about British and American diplomats in the lead-up to a war. Incredibly sharp and witty dialogue. The one- liners come so thick and fast you will need to watch it a few times to make sure you didn't miss anything.Plot is good, though does lose focus from time to time. The plot is not important though - it is all about the dialogue.Given the razor-sharp script, you need people to deliver it, and the cast given that job is almost perfect for the assignment. To the fore is Peter Capaldi as the fast-talking expletive-loving name- calling nobody-respecting uber-intense Malcolm Tucker, the British government's head of communications. His performance is wildly over the top, and is side-splittingly funny.Tom Hollander plays the straight man to Capaldi's clown, and does it superbly. The remaining cast are good too - David Rasche, Anna Chlumsky, James Gandolfini, Mimi Kennedy, Gina McKee. Steve Coogan plays a low-key but excellent role as the disgruntled constituent.Surely one of the most under-hyped, understated, under-marketed masterpieces of all time.

Rating-9/10In The Loop is a political comedy that involves a plot about a committee, seems very dull but trust me, it is not. This movie is timed to perfection when it comes to the comedy and the jokes literally come thick and fast and flow so well throughout that this becomes one of the best political comedies ever made. I felt it was wonderful, not flawless but nevertheless outstanding and here below is just why so.Now the whole story can get just a little dull in places but still manages to be partially interesting(maybe for politics lovers a bit more so). It also feels a slight bit confusing but the real beauty of this movie isn't in the plot, it's in the jokes that are crafted immensely well. See the jokes kind of outweigh the plot and it gets to a point where you no longer really care what is happening and just wait for the next great joke to appear(I will add though, the plot is important to understand what's going on obviously). The cast are a kind of bag of big names and names you will have never heard of but this is still very well cast and the characters work oh so well. The biggest kind of addition if you will is James Gandolfini as General Miller and he is pretty good to say he has never been in anything like this before, truly funny. The true stand out performance has to go to Peter Capaldi though as Malcolm Tucker who is just incredible and hilariously funny, the kind of character you wound't want to meet but at the same time can be awe-inspiring.Armando Iannucci creates this kind of political comedy within a sitcom, that's then a film actually, but it works so well. It could also be said this is oddly thrilling to see what will happen next, well OK maybe not so much but still there is no denying this is pretty fun to watch and see what happens. The camera work is also great, it makes the film seem even more like an extended version of "The Thick of It" on what this is basically the movie version of, good job from cinematographer Jamie Cairney. The jokes are so well spread as well, the big kind of jokes, like a howling laugh kind of joke are mostly reserved for important scenes actually, but the little jokes, the one's that make you laugh a little, they are in so much quantity, this becomes like a joke a minute and will make you laugh. The level of laughing for this movie may only reach some but in my opinion if anyone watched this and didn't at least smile, I don't know what comedy is. It has to be said that the plot is fairly intriguing too, I mean for me it is not a thing I will remember forever but in itself, it is very well done and very well made by Iannucci and co. For them to think up such a plot but then for a comedy, well it takes a lot of skill, this is the kind of story I expect to see on a political drama movie, not a comedy so all credit for turning a serious kind of thing into comedy gold. Overall just a brilliant movie and for me one of the top political comedies out there. Now this maybe isn't everybody's cup of tea and I can understand that, this is more the kind of humour where you really have to listen to get the best jokes, and on the people from the TV show who come to the film, all credit for transitioning from the normal show to the film with such calm skill.

I almost always finish a movie once I start it, but I gave up on this after less than 30 minutes. I love witty, intellectual, satirical British stuff and that is what I was expecting, but for two specific reasons, I didn't stick around. The first is a very personal reason--I am certain that the unbelievably abusive and absurdly foul-mouthed British minister was inspired by our own lovely Rahm Emanuel, and even though politically I'm a bit on the left, I detest Emanuel. I couldn't bear to watch nearly 2 hours of anybody reminding me so much of him, even if it makes him look like the nasty, narcissistic, power-hungry jerk he is. (Yeah, I really, don't like him.) Second, the swearing in this film is ridiculous and distracting. Note how many people comment on this. I could care less about foul language---frankly, it doesn't bother me at all--but this script seem to be the product of a bunch of writers competing to see who could introduce the most expletives into the film, and, after they were done, they passed the script along for final polishing to an editor with Tourettes. I'm sure that there was some artistic point to this, or maybe they thought they were being sophisticated or realistic or I don't know what, but I just found it to be extraordinarily annoying. You're probably thinking that I'm a bit of a prude, so I feel obligated to point out that after I gave up on this, I watched an excellent British gangster film which was extremely liberal with foul language; however, in this case, it seemed completely appropriate contextually. I'm so used to extreme swearing that I hardly notice it, and I thought all of the other reviewers were probably just a bunch of uptight old women, until I listened to it myself. I would actually encourage people to start this movie, just to see if they agree that this bizarrely excessive foul-mouthed script plays as badly as I think it does and immensely detracts from the story they are trying to tell, or if I'm just not hip enough.

In the Loop (2009): Dir: Armando Iannucci / Cast: Tom Hollander, Peter Capaldi, Chris Addison, James Gandolfini, Anna Chlumsky: One of the funniest films ever made about politics, and perhaps the best of its kind since Dr. Strangelove or Network. This is a brilliant satire about lack of communication, misunderstanding and total confusion in its media frenzy. The film regards a corrupt British government that becomes the subject of a war against the Middle East when the Secretary of State uses the word "unforeseeable." He is played with bumbling hilarity by Tom Hollander whose word gains him unwanted attention that he must spin webs around in order to maintain some sort of dignity. Peter Capaldi steals the entire film as the communications chief who uses profanity like a machine gun when doing damage control. He must turn this around before the tension escalates to fatal heights on both margins. James Gandolfini steals scenes as a U.S. General whose opinion of war is that it is stupid. He lays claim to some of the funniest lines with blunt cynical delivery. Chris Addison also stars as a sort of spin doctor who causes more damage but manages to sleep with a hot young intern. Anna Chlumsky also appears in her best work since her stint in the My Girl films. Director Armando Iannucci delivers a brilliant film about flawed political communication. Score: 9 / 10