Funny bits baggily strung together
In the Loop feels like a TV show stretched out uncomfortably over two hours, says Andrew M Brown
17 April 2009

Bullying communications chief Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) threatens the juvenile young aide Toby (Chris Addison)

In the Loop opens with a cascade of profanity from angry Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) as he marches into No 10 where he works as the PM's communications chief.

The swearing is the first thing that strikes you about this film. It comes out of Tucker like machine-gun fire. He would hardly exist were it not for his invective. It's how he expresses himself, through squawking richly imagined insults and threats of violence. He bullies and in turn is bullied.

In the Loop is a feature-length variant of The Thick of It, a BBC television comedy about politics. The film retains Peter Capaldi from the TV show but the other characters are new. Chris Langham used to play the hapless minister, but Langham's career ended with "personal problems". Tom Hollander replaces him. Hollander, a short fellow - easy for Tucker to intimidate - is very funny as Simon Foster, the Minister for International Development. He is vexed by the opposition between his ambition and his conscience.

On this occasion it's Foster who has infuriated Tucker. He has told the BBC's Eddie Mayer in a radio interview that war is "unforeseeable". The trouble is, the prime minister and the American president have not ruled war out. Tucker, who speaks with the authority of the prime minister, screams at Foster that he must cancel media appearances and toe the line on the matter of war: it's neither unforeseeable, nor foreseeable. Reporters ambush the minister as he's coming out of the Foreign Office. Anxious to get himself out of trouble after his earlier solecism, Foster blurts out a new soundbite: "Britain must be ready to climb the mountain of conflict." This delights the hawks on both sides of the pond.

In the Loop has an involved plot with a big cast of characters, which presumably reflects the over-populated and bureaucratic nature of modern government. For example, ministers in the film are told to attend meetings at which they're not expected to say anything, for the reason that Americans, as someone says, don't think it's a proper meeting unless there are 30 people on either side.

Half-hour sitcoms stretched into feature-length films traditionally like to ring the changes by packing their characters off to foreign parts. In the Loop director Armando Iannucci sends them to Washington DC. Tucker thinks the best way to neutralise the gaffe-prone Foster is to post him and his bespectacled young aide Toby Wright (Chris Addison) to the US State Department on a fact-finding jolly.

The trip to Washington provides laughs at the expense of Foster and Wright's naïve delight at arriving in the United States. Wright appears to be nothing but a speccy juvenile fresh out of uni. We see him excitedly leaning out of the window of their diplomatic limousine and photographing himself with his mobile phone, which he pretentiously starts calling his "cell".

It is in America also that the movie's weaknesses start to show. Ianucci has persuaded a big American star to join the project, the great James Gandolfini of The Sopranos, playing teddy bear-like General Miller of the Pentagon.

But there's something underpowered about Gandolfini's performance. He seems unsure of himself in a comic role and watching this man mountain attempt it is an uncomfortable experience, like watching a dancing bear who has had his claws removed.

This may be a deliberate effect, since the point about the armchair general - he's the Colin Powell figure if you like - is that he has lost his mojo. To begin with, as a combat veteran, he stands resolutely against conflict. As he says: "War - once you've been there, you never want to go again. It's like France."

But in the end, and after an electrifying head-to-head confrontation with Malcolm Tucker in which Tucker asks him if he has ever killed a man, the general caves in to the politicians.

The American scenes bring further complications to the plot. The gist is that the agencies compete with each other, locked in a battle of egos. At no stage is war discussed in other than abstract terms. No one seems to contemplate the nature or consequences of armed conflict. Only General Miller, briefly, talks of inevitable casualties.

Washington accommodates veteran political operators such as Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy, very snappy with the wisecracks), the US Assistant Secretary for Diplomacy, and her bitter rival Linton Barwick (David Rasche), who heads the secret war committee. Barwick detests any notion of open government. "Glass offices are for perverts," he says, and when an aide offers to get him frosted glass, Barwick quips: "Frosting is for cakes." Nearly all the other staffers, though, are youths who barely need to shave. "It's like Bugsy Malone but with real guns," says a Brit observer.

In the Loop contains some excellent one-liners and is thoughtful stuff. Peter Capaldi is outstanding: he buzzes with hyperthyroidic energy and he inserts an interesting element of pathos into the character too when we see him beaten down by humiliation. Tom Hollander does a sympathetic variation on Hugh Grant's species of bumbling English decency.

The film functions best as a series of funny episodes but the structure in which the parts are strung together is too baggy and has too many complications. The lead-up to war fails to generate any suspense. In the Loop never feels or looks like a proper movie as opposed to a telly show on a bigger screen.