For the first time in a very long time I watched three movies back to back - comedies, to be precise. There are so precious few really funny comedies out there that discovering truly humourous fare is something to be shared and celebrated.
Adam McKay first collaborated with Will Ferrell on the deservedly legendary “Anchorman”, and “The Other Guys” is the best work that McKay and Ferrell have done since. Ferrell stars with Mark Wahlberg – who displays some good comic timing - as the titular “other guys”, policemen who excel at paperwork and minor crimes while their more flashy colleagues, here embodied by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, get the girls and media attention. Unexpectedly there’s an opportunity for the “other guys” to step up and become super cops themselves, and the result is an entertaining action comedy with some great action and comedy scenes that veer from the predictably humourous to the completely surprising. The opening set piece in particular is spectacular and fittingly exaggerated.
Chris Morris’s “Four Lions” is delightfully transgressive political comedy filmmaking. Starring Riz Ahmend, Adeel Akhtar and Will Adamsdale as a group of friends living in England, the film covers their attempts to become suicide bombers. These attempts include a short-lived stint at an al-Qaeda training camp and flying explosive packages. In between these scenes there are others that play out as if in a thriller, and the ending is unexpectedly emotional. As “Four Lions” pushes the envelope of controversy, the satire cuts to the bone in many scenes, such as those that toy with Western perceptions of suicide bombers. It was in the 1990s that MAD Magazine published comic strips set in terrorist training camps (“If Ahmed has three hand grenades and one accidentally explodes in his hand, how many grenades are left?”) that would become unthinkable after 9/11. A decade after that world flattening event, “Four Lions” is the first film in general release to employ perceptions of ‘terrorists’ in such farcical form. The result is alternately hilarious, moving and generally jaw-dropping.
Nothing prepared me for the genius of Armando Iannucci. Known in the UK for some television work, Iannucci’s “In the Loop” is a brilliant political satire that is also the best-written comedy I’ve seen in a long time, and is probably the best comedy I’ll see all year. The satire is sophisticated and incredibly fast. “In the Loop” lampoons and convincingly demonstrates the constructive or destructive (depending on where you stand on certain issues) role of spin in contemporary politics as political bedfellows America and Britain become involved in a war of words and possibly an actual war due to an ill-informed statement made by the British Secretary of State for International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander). It’s left to politics veteran and misanthropic Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) to spin the situation towards a positive outcome as things get increasingly complicated when, for example, confidential information is mistakenly made public and secret committees are formed.
The dialogue is profanity laden and colourful; Tucker ends a phone call with a particularly memorable sign-off, while he describes Foster as a “Nazi Julie Andrews” when the latter comes up with the inspirational phrase, “climb the mountain of conflict”. Indeed, it is Tucker who sets the tone when he opens the movie with “Good morning, my little chicks and cocks”, and so kick starts a top class comedy that was sadly, but not surprisingly, never theatrically released in South Africa. It is available in all good DVD stores, ready to kill the souls of those who flock to Adam Sandler movies.
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