An overly madcap, mildly amusing but eventually tedious comedy about a pathological liar (Matt Damon) turned whistleblower.  While the movie is no great shakes, Damon’s performance is excellent, and he manages to inject some humanity into what is a butt-of-a-joke, one-note character.  Given his performances from The Talented Mr. Ripley through The Departed, Damon seems never to be given the credit he is due.

A gut-busting, literate comedy about the run-up to a fictitious war (clearly meant to be Iraq) and the involvement of US and British civil servants in the process, which includes vicious political jockeying, abusive message control, mendacious leaks, pettiness of the grandest of scales, and biting insults. Armando Iannucci’s script was rightly nominated and proved to be the forerunner to the hilarious HBO series, Veep.

In many ways,  it echoes the British The Office, with politics supplanting paper. The repartee’ is smart, crackling and hilarious.  The film is a series of verbal jousts, this one, on the eve of a critical U.N. vote, being my favorite (Of course, Malcolm Tucker – Peter Capaldi – is a personal hero):

Tom Hollander (Pirates of the Caribbean and scene stealing as King George in HBO’s John Adams) is brilliant as a British minister out-of-his-depth and made a pawn, and James Gandolfini, a you can see above, is also memorable as an American general trying to slow down a march to war.

The sharpest of satires.  Aaron Eckart is slick motormouth and p.r. flack Nick Naylor, a smooth and ingratiating shill for the tobacco industry. In his rise, fall, and semi-rise, the film’s message – think for yourself because there’s money and power in letting folks tell you what is good for you, be they corporate behemoths or self proclaimed protectors of the common good – is hilariously delivered. 

As Naylor struggles internally with selling death, the fight is not a one way dawning. It goes 15 rounds and the preening self-regard and power seeking of the do-gooders is contrasted with the soulless, rapacious greed of the baddies.  It’s a close run thing, and an enjoyable fight to watch.  

Indeed, this movie should be required viewing for every ex-hippie who now clamors to ensure that his or her child live a risk-free life, at the expense of everyone who might otherwise own a gun, light a smoke, have a drink, eat a transfat, shout an obscenity or injure budding self-esteem. 

I mean, we know the corporations are bad, as exemplified by my favorite line from the film, from the President of The Academy of Tobacco Studies (played by J.K. Simmons):  

We don’t sell Tic Tacs, we sell cigarettes. And they’re cool, available, and addictive.  The job is almost done for us.

My how the semi-mighty have fallen.  The Woody Allen stable of Diane Keaton, Diane Wiest, and Mia Farrow are replaced by Tea Leone, Debra Messing and . . . wait for it . . . Tiffany-Amber-Thiessen.  Worse, the 67 year old Allen still insists on casting himself as a love interest (this time, with 36 year old Leoni).  The courtship is ridiculous and the images revolting.

Worse, the film lacks one funny premise, line or sketch.  Allen plays Allen, arms waving and neuroses on all cylinders. But oh does he have some subversive things to say about filmmaking.

Allen is directing a $60 million picture.  He he he.  And he’s stricken by psychosomatic blindness. Te he he.  But he makes the film anyway, and in the process, reunites with his ex-wife.  And again, they kiss (just vile – you’re praying his teeth do not fall out).  And guess what?  In the end, the French love the film.

Har har har.

Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

It is the worst film of 2002, certainly one of Allen’s most terrible and perhaps the shittiest film of the millennium.  In the face of Hollywood Ending, saying “Well, Allen directed Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters,” is like saying “Well, Hitler built the Autobahn.”

Funny to the point of tears, but a testament to the generous nature of Americans.  My fear was that Sacha Baron Cohen would be cruel to his subjects, but the film is, perhaps unintentionally, quite the opposite.  Yes, the rubes and dudes and New York toughs can be less than politically correct, but what they lack in modern manners they make up for in their easy acceptance of this bizarre, crude faux immigrant who tests the limits of all patience. As Christopher Hitchens noted:

Americans are almost pedantic in their hospitality and politesse. At a formal dinner in Birmingham, Ala., the guests discuss Borat while he’s out of the room… agree what a nice young American he might make. And this is after he has called one guest a retard and grossly insulted the wife of another… The arrival of a mountainous black hooker does admittedly put an end to the evening, but if a swarthy stranger had pulled any of the foregoing at a liberal dinner party in England, I wouldn’t give much for his chances. 

Julianne Moore and Annette Bening are two middle-aged lesbians with two teenage children in the midst of a mid-life crisis.  The kids decide they want to meet their father (Mark Ruffalo, who is actually just their sperm donor).  Very funny, occasionally poignant, and refreshingly devoid of the kind of politics you might fear from such an endeavor.  Bening is particularly good as the controlling, more responsible member of couple, the uncool drudge, trying to keep it all together in competition with cool “new” and fun, breezy Moore.