State of Play – 2 stars

State of Play.  A Russell Crowe Washington D.C. political potboiler. Crowe sports  impressive weight gain to flesh out his frumpy D.C. reporter, and there are very strong supporting turns by Jeff Daniels as a corrupt congressman and Jason Bateman as a slimy P.R. flack.  The film also moves like the wind, but dewy-eyed cub blogger reporter Rachel McAdams is horribly miscast (she looks like she belongs at the Lancome’ section at Macys), and Helen Mirren as the tough editor is loaded with too many hackneyed lines.  Finally, Ben Affleck plays the congressman in the middle of scandal and his quivering lip and waterworks are being worked much too hard.  Pretty pedestrian.