Every once in a while I need to be reminded that British humor is very funny, and that some of the best comedy out there came from the United Kingdom, from Monty Python to the Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg films. In the Loop is a movie spinoff from Armando Iannucci's TV series, The Thick of It, which satirizes politicians and the media covering them. 

The movie is obscenely merciless, skewering policy-makers in both the British and U.S. governments for the game-playing, spin-doctoring, self-serving entities they are. The ones who gain some kind of livelihood from it are essentially competing for manhood -- and this includes the women -- while those who might have some bit of conscience about the whole thing are pushed around as spineless wimps in a pit bull's world.

In this case, no less than the starting of a war is at stake, which only magnifies the lunacy of this playground of one-uppers wielding verbal technicalities as their weapons. In the Loop operates as a modern-day satire does, mixing very mean characters with very stupid or confused ones, with zingers, profanity, and quotable lines flying about so fast you'd get whipped in the eye if you were standing in the way. In fact, my only complaint about the movie might be that it feels like it's following a foolproof formula used by certain current comedies -- but that's hardly a complaint when the comedy works so well, right? (Capsule review)

(Released by IFC Films; not rated by MPAA.)

Review also posted at www.windowtothemovies.com.