"In the Loop": Liberal, funny

I have to agree with Mike Potemra over at The Corner: In the Loop‘s nomination for the best adapted screenplay Oscar is as unexpected as it is deserving:

This fictionalized treatment of the Iraq War does, it is true, take the line that America and England were rushed into war by the malicious use of fraudulent intelligence. But the film is a) laugh-out-loud funny, b) exceptionally well-written, and c) the most accurate depiction of themoral and cultural climate of Washington, D.C., I’ve ever seen in a movie.

The movie was as liberal as Kennedy reunion; that didn’t stop it from being hilarious. Nailing the life of a D.C. peon was the highlight for me. As I wrote back in July:

“In the Loop” provides one of the least romanticized depictions of life in Washington to come along in recent years: Instead of focusing on the grandeur of the big names in town, the movie looks at the lives of mid- and low-level functionaries who really make the town work. It also eschews the nobility of said functionaries in which programs such as “The West Wing” reveled; the characters who populate “In the Loop” are more worried about covering their rears than saving the world.

I highly recommend checking it out if you get the chance. It’s out on Blu-ray and DVD at this very moment. You could even rent it from Netflix or Blockbuster, if you’d like.

(Of course, if you feel like the people who worked on the film and the studio that produced it don’t deserve to recoup their costs or be rewarded for their brilliant film, you should just find a BitTorrent and steal it. Because hey, stealing’s not a big deal anymore, right?)