The Iraq War has been criticized, parodied, dissected, and lamented from just about every creative source attempting remotely topical satire over the past five years, to the point where I automatically roll my eyes at anything new that includes the words “Iraq,” “War,” and “Satire” in its description (or any two out of the three). What could possibly be said about America’s march to war that wasn’t already weakly parodied in countless lame comedies, or grittily explored in numerous interesting, if joyless dramas?
Even with this weighty mindset and essentially no interest to ever watch another Iraq War movie ever again, I went to see In The Loop, the Iraq War parody (d’oh!) from noted British comedy writer Armando Iannucci, and I can honestly say, it was easily the funniest and sharpest satire of modern-day warfare I’ve ever seen. It’s a completely watchable and hilarious movie independent of its subject matter, yet also manages to viciously tear into the dispassionate bureaucracy behind military action without getting bogged down in the preachy heavy-handedness of, well, pretty much anything that describes itself as satire.
I’ll refrain from going into too much detail, cause I assume most people haven’t had a chance to see this yet (I, however, live in a select city — excuse me while I adjust my monocle. Editor’s Note: Everyone in select cities wears a monocle). But I rarely feel the need to write a straight-up “you should see this movie” post (unless it’s like, Up or Dark Knight or something we can all discuss), so consider In The Loop my one official recommendation of the summer.
If you see the movie and don’t walk away moved by the characters’ ultimate courses of action in the end (particularly that of James Gandolfini as the pro-peace U.S. General), or endlessly quoting mantras like “difficult difficult lemon difficult,” then I will personally give you your money back. The money you spend on BWE.tv, I mean. Which reminds me, why aren’t you people mailing money into BWE.tv?
(For further recommendation, you can hear an extremely interesting interview with Iannucci about the film and his past comedy projects here. Man, I am on a recommending-sh*t ROLL. Also, everyone watch Casablanca, it’s really good.)
