The Artist

When I was in film school a professor once told us that silent films were the true manifestation of the cinematic art.  What makes a film different from a play?  It’s the editing and the ability to emphasize images by getting close-ups.  He also claimed that when sound came in, they were only just starting to perfect this silent art and that the arrival of the new technology stifled true cinema.   Indeed there is a school of experimental filmmakers led by Stan Brakhage that uses no sound whatsoever, not even music.  It’s all pure image and editing.

Of course there is a world of difference between a Stan Brakhage short and The Artist, which is at its heart an old fashioned melodrama right out of 1920’s Hollywood.  It is a black and white silent film set in the period of the transition to sound.  George Valentin, played by Jean Dujardin, would have agreed with my old professor about the technology of sound degrading cinema.  He is an entertainer of the old school (Valentin not my old professor) who can float through a tap routine with a serene smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye.  He looks good in a tux and a pencil thin mustache and he knows it. 

By chance he meets a talented young starlet named Peppy Miller, played by Berenice Bejo, who’s also quite a hoofer.  She’s dazzled by him and he’s attracted to her, as much by her talent as her long legs.  He provides her with her first break.   

When studio head Al Zimmer, played by John Goodman, shows George a screen test using the new recording technology, George refuses to be a part of it, preferring instead to write, produce and direct his own film.  Peppy, despite her infatuation with George, is not adverse to the new technology and as her star rises, his falls.

It is amazing that this film got made.  Making a black and white silent film, shot with 4:3 aspect ratio, just like an old movie, seems like asking modern movie audiences to stay away.  You add in the simple, almost naïve story, you wonder how this got past the first story conference.

What makes it work is the charisma of the two stars.  Jean Dujardin plays George as an irrepressible ham, but one you can’t help but love.  The secret is that he is so secure in his talent that he’s not threatened by his fellow cast members and he treats the crew with respect and affection.  Plus, just one of Dujardin’s expressions says more than pages of dialog.

Likewise Berenice Bejo captures both Penny’s ambition and her humanity.  Despite her gratefulness to George and her crush on him, she takes advantage of the breaks he refuses, and enjoys stardom almost as much as he does.  But you can see how the downward turn in his fortunes distresses her.   In the end when she has an opportunity to help him she does.

John Goodman finds very little new in the character of the cigar chomping, bottom line obsessed stereotype of the studio chief, but he plays it to the hilt.  Special mention needs to go to Uggie, the Jack Russell Terrier who plays The Dog.  He’s smart, funny and loyal.  What a good boy!

The Artist is not high cinematic art.  I think my old film professor was a little dogmatic.  There are silent films that achieved greatness, but there are more that are merely good, mediocre or bad, just like talkies and everything else for that matter.  Sound did not kill cinema artistically.  I guess The Artist would have to be considered an art film in this day and age and that is going to limit its appeal, which is a shame because it is a thoroughly enjoyable movie.

The Iron Lady

Political biopics can be tricky propositions, especially if they about a recent figure.  Anybody who’s worth making a movie about is bound to be controversial.  Do you play up the controversy, making a political film that will alienate a good percentage of your potential audience?  Or do you ignore the issues and concentrate on the personality of your subject, assuming it’s possible to separate them?  

In the case of Margaret Thatcher, I’m not sure that the latter is an option, so many of the problems that people had with her stemmed from her unyielding nature and unwillingness to compromise. And yet that is the approach that Phyllida Lloyd and Abi Morgan, the director and screenwriter respectively, of The Iron Lady have taken.  They have set aside Thatcher’s divisive legacy and tried to present her as a feminist icon, which she is in a way although most feminists would reject her conservative policies.  What they leave us with is a frustrating film at best and a maddening one at worst.  This is because it is impossible to separate Margaret Thatcher from politics.

First of all, let’s get the obvious out of the way.  Meryl Streep is fabulous.  She plays both the driven almost ruthless politician that changes history, and the flawed neglectful mother and wife who needs her family but can’t spend much time cultivating those relationships.  She looks almost exactly like Thatcher at several stages in her life and captures her voice and mannerisms perfectly.

Jim Broadbent is also excellent as Denis Thatcher, her devoted husband and great love of her life.  He plays Denis as a seemingly befuddled middle class Englishman.  But he is smarter than he lets on, and he knows how and when to get his wife to laugh, and to calm her down with a “steady on, old girl.”  Jim Broadbent is always fun to watch.

Most biopics that try to cover a lot of years tend to gloss over things.  This is a sound decision in most cases because not every moment in a public figure’s life is important.  But The Iron Lady is all gloss.  It’s like a greatest hits medley, only giving you unsatisfying snatches of the songs.  Consequently there is no build up and really no drama.  Thatcher’s personal and political lives flow past at a blur that never slows down.  I’ve seen documentaries with more emotional depth.

And then there’s the political aspect.  Margaret Thatcher changed politics in Britain, bringing Reagan’s supply side paradigm to England.  That’s her story and her struggle.  So we see snippets of speeches where she rails against unions.  She cuts popular social programs and watches the resulting riots from her limousine, unmoved.  If you’re a conservative, you’re frustrated because these ideas are not fully developed; if you’re a liberal, you are enraged because there’s no rebuttal.  This is not a “political” film, after all.

I won’t hide the fact that I’m in the latter group.  In the end, despite Meryl Streep’s performance, I had no sympathy for the woman.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

There is a highly placed Soviet mole in British intelligence during the height of the cold war.  George Smiley, played by Gary Oldman, is brought back from forced retirement to find out who it is.  That is the very simplified set up to Tomas Alfredson’s film version of John Le Carre’s novel, which was loosely based on the case of the Cambridge Five, a ring of moles that included the infamous Kim Philby.  It’s interesting to note that LeCarre’, who’s real name is David Cornwell was outed as an agent to the Soviets in 1964 by Philby, cutting short his intelligence career.

                LeCarre’s world is one of dark subtlety.  There are only shades of grey and if anyone still has any idealism left, he hides it carefully.  It is a world not far removed from the fight against Nazism when the USSR and the west were allies.  Some of the veterans of that fight had loyalties to the old allies that they never revealed nor forsook.  

                Every element of this film contributes to the theme of moral ambiguity.  The cinematography is dark and grainy, using a lot of natural lighting.  The performances are studies in subtlety, especially Gary Oldman’s.  These are upper and middle class Englishmen of the World War II generation,  who value restraint and civilized behavior even in the face of black treason.  And yet they are good enough actors to convey their deeply suppressed emotions on their carefully blank faces.  Standing out are Mark Strong as the put upon Jim Prideaux, and Colin Firth as Bill Haydon, the womanizing agent in a trusted position in the service.

                Even the script avoids outright conflict, preferring to dwell on the process of catching the mole, and the complicated set up of the scheme.  The climax, where the mole is arrested, is entirely off screen.  One minute, Smiley is at the safe house, fingering his revolver and waiting for the turned spy and the next minute, the mole is in jail waiting to be exchanged.  I actually found this to be a little disconcerting but I have to admire the nerve it took to do it.

                Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a little bloodless to be a complete triumph but it is still one of the year’s better movies.

Christmas Capsule Reviews

In celebration of Christmas Hollywood has released a ton of interesting movies, far too many for me to see, much less review in depth.  So I’m going to do at least one capsule review blog, and possibly another one next week.  To make up for it I’ll also review some of the DVD’s I’ve watched, which I usually don’t do.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

This is a disappointingly tepid version of Stieg Larsson’s dark crime novel, from the usually edgy David Fincher.  I was almost rabid to see this because the subject matter seemed to be in Fincher’s wheelhouse.  The film has its moments but basically he whiffed.  Besides some ill-advised changes to the original story, Fincher’s main problem is that he and star Rooney Mara fail to capture Lisbeth’s rage.  See the Swedish version and wait for Fincher’s sequels.  He has a lower bar to clear there.

Rio

Rio is a by the numbers computer animated feature.  There are a few touching moments especially if you are a pet owner, and Jesse Eisenberg delivers a good vocal performance.  Otherwise, the gags only rise to mildly amusing and the plot is stunning in its unoriginality.

My Week with Marilyn

There is a lot wrong with this movie.  The plot is somewhat muddled.  All that talk about Olivier’s traditional acting training versus Marilyn’s method is too insiderish for general audiences.  This is supposedly based on a true memoir but you wonder how true it is or if it’s just some guy claiming he had an affair with Marilyn Monroe.  The film is redeemed, however, by two great performances.  One is Kenneth Branagh’s portrayal of Sir Laurence Olivier.  It’s not an exact copy but he captures Olivier’s dignity and prickliness.  Michelle Williams does give us an exact replica of Marilyn Monroe right down to the songs.  Marilyn was mixed up and neurotic but she also enjoyed her fame and the attention that went with it so there was a calculating edge to her.  Williams inhabits all aspects of Marilyn’s psyche.  It is amazing to watch.

Miracle on 34^th Street

The DVD I bought featured a colorized version of the film, which is a black sin against the art of cinema.  I cast that disc aside and went for the second disc that had the film in its original black and white format.  This is a perfect modern Christmas story, with some sentiment, although it’s not as syrupy as It’s a Wonderful Life, and touches of humor.  It is tied together with the bow of Edmund Gwenn’s performance as Kris Kringle.  He radiates goodwill and the spirit of Christmas.  You just want to sit down with him for a few hours and have him sort out your life and you’re jealous of little Natalie Wood because she gets so much face time with Santa.  There have been other versions of this story but they’ve all flopped, probably because they didn’t have Edmund Gwenn.

War Horse

War Horse is an epic weepie from Steven Spielberg that follows the picaresque adventures of a horse from its birth in Devon, England to its trials as a cavalry horse in World War I, when the machine gun put an end to cavalry charges.  Along the way the horse wins the hearts of the various Germans, Englishmen and Frenchmen he encounters.  Nobody does this sort of thing better than Spielberg, and yes it is terribly manipulative, but it is also a beautiful film and well worth seeing if you are in the mood for it.

Bridesmaids

Saturday Night Live Alumnus Kristen Wiig wrote and produced this at turns raunchy and touching comedy about a down on her luck thirty-something dealing with the stress of being her best friend’s maid of honor.  It proves difficult when another friend, with more resources threatens their relationship.  It’s a little too long and the raunchy elements don’t always sit well with the emotional parts, but this is very entertaining.

The Adventures of Tintin is Steven Spielberg’s animated adaptation of Herge’s comic book creation.  These are tremendously popular all over the world and Spielberg does them justice, producing a fast paced thrill ride that never lets up.  Tintin, voiced by Jamie Bell is an engaging character and the animation is amazing.  Hopefully there will be more of these.

Young Adult

Mavis Gary, played by Charlize Theron, is a former high school over-achiever, who at thirty seven finds herself divorced, alone and the ghost author of a schlocky young adult romance series that had been popular a few years earlier but was now being wrapped up.   Seeking to recapture a taste of her glory days she returns to her rural Minnesota home town to reconnect with her old boyfriend, Buddy Slade, played by Patrick Wilson.  The fact that Buddy is married with children barely registers with the self-absorbed Mavis.  In her mind it is still high school and she’s still the prom queen and her bad marriage and disappointing writing career haven’t happened yet.  Once in town she meets Matt Freehauf, played by Patton Oswalt.  Matt was so far down the social ladder from Mavis, she doesn’t remember him even though their lockers were side by side for four years.  Matt serves as Mavis’s sounding board and unheard conscience as she puts her master plan into action.

Young Adult is written by Diablo Cody and directed by Ivan Reitman, the team that produced Juno.  What they’ve come up with this time is a dark comedy that nudges you out of your comfort zone.  After you realize Mavis’s capacity for self-deception, you know you’re watching a train wreck and the only suspense is how bad it will be.  The narrative trick that the filmmakers and Theron have achieved is that they’ve created a character with whom you sympathize, even though you don’t particularly like her.  Nobody should have to go through this.

Cody’s script, even though it lacks the verbal fireworks of Juno, is a key element to this accomplishment.  She has a wicked eye for details, identifying all the little things that can make life so frustrating, like how color print cartridges that you’ve paid thirty dollars for and have only used once dry up when you need them leaving you with pinkish stripes that are barely recognizable as a photo.  Or she shows how Mavis puts so much effort into her exterior: manicures, pedicures and tons of make-up without it occurring to her that it’s her interior that needs attention.

But of course the problem is that it is still a trick.  In the end you don’t like Mavis, even if you sort of sympathize with her.   If confronted with her in real life, at most you would say, “you really should talk to someone,” and that would be the extent of your willingness to help.  At the movie’s ambiguous finale I didn’t wonder if she was going to turn her life around, I just wanted her to live it far away from me.

Young Adult is a nifty accomplishment but not an emotionally moving film.

Descendants, The

This year I’m trying to get a jump on the Oscar season by compiling a list from the early predictions by several prognosticators.  We’ll see how that works out.  What I have now is a rather intimidatingly long list of films that are all coming out in the next few weeks.  As a result I may not be able to provide you with my usual profound insights due to being pressed for time.

One of the major risks with making my list before the nominations are announced is that I may waste my time on a film that ultimately I don’t have to see.  If the movie in question is another provocative screed by Lars Von Trier or a pretentious snooze fest by Terrence Malick, that situation could be disappointing,  but not with The Descendants, which is a pretty safe bet.  It’s near the top of most of those lists of predictions.  It is also the long awaited return to filmmaking for Alexander Payne, who directed About Schmidt and Sideways both films that received much love from the Academy.  So I think I’m safe here.

Matt King, played by George Clooney, is  a high powered attorney in Hawaii.  He is descended from Hawaiian royalty and has a large extended family who own a large tract of unspoiled coastline.    Due to tax laws, the family needs to sell the land and they are considering offers from several developers.  Matt is the sole executor of the trust so the decision is his but he’s promised to go with the majority vote from the family.  The deal is making news on the islands and most of the Hawaiian natives don’t want them to sell.  

All this is taking him away from his family, which he never really had time for anyway.   Matt is married with two girls, Alexandra, played by Shailene Woodley, and Scottie, played by Amara Miller, but he doesn’t seem very happy in the relationship.  Consequently, the daughters don’t really know  him and his wife, Elizabeth, played by Patricia Hastie, is having an affair.

Matt finds out about it when Elizabeth has a boating accident that puts her into a coma.  This puts him in the situation of dealing with his feelings about the betrayal while taking care of the girls and negotiating the land deal at the same time.  Eventually he decides to confront the other man and of course he takes the girls with him.

To me the defining characteristic of an Alexander Payne movie is the roller coaster of emotions that he puts his main characters through.  It takes a talented actor to follow the script’s twists and turns and George Clooney does it with style.  In the first scene, he’s talking about how once she recovers and this land deal goes through, he’ll mend his ways and start being a better husband and father.  But later when he finds out about the affair, he tells her comatose body, “I was going to ask for a divorce.”  Was that true?  It doesn’t matter, because that’s what he was feeling at the time.  Two contradictory emotions within maybe twenty minutes and Clooney sells it.

The other performances are good too.  Shailene Woodley stands out as the older daughter, who is struggling under the burden of being the one to find out about the affair and telling her father.  She’s also balking at her new role as a mentor and caretaker for her sister.  In the end she rises to the occasion.  It’s a masterful portrayal of a girl being thrust into adulthood and fighting it every step of the way.  

There are a few quibbles.  The plot meanders at times.  Alexandra insists on bringing a male friend named Sid, played by Nick Krause, on their various errands to inform family members about Elizabeth’s fatal condition.  It’s kind of funny in a quirky sort of way, and Matt and Sid have a bonding moment.  But Sid really does nothing to advance the plot and I don’t understand why he’s there.

The Descendants is a worthy, if not perfect return to filmmaking for Alexander Payne.

Hugo

Everything that’s magical about film can be traced back to French film pioneer Georges Melies.  He started out his career in the late 19^th century as a magician, using his engineering genius to design tricks.  So when he encountered an early movie camera, he immediately saw the possibilities.  He was the first to use dissolves, multiple exposures and time lapse photography.  He made things disappear by stopping the camera, removing the object and then rolling again in what was called the “stop trick.”  He hand tinted whole sections of his films so they would be in color.  Not many of his efforts survive, they were melted down to make shoes during the first world war, but those that do, even though they are faded, grainy and mostly in black and white, still have the power to charm us.  He had that unique combination of technical wizardry and a sense of whimsy and wonder that translated onto the screen.  It is a DNA that runs through cinema history in the likes of Willis O’Brien, Ray Harryhausen, George Pal, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

                Which makes it somewhat odd that a hardcore realist like Martin Scorsese would want to make a movie version of Brian Selznick’s Caldecott award winning novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which has Melies as a character.  And yet Scorsese is nothing if not a cineaste with a deep love and knowledge of film history, even those parts of it that he would not seem to be descended from.  And frankly I’m not even sure I can say that anymore.  When he saw Avatar, he knew he wanted to make a 3D movie and one that would blow people’s socks off to boot.

                Georges Melies would have approved of the sentiment.

In 1930’s Paris, Hugo Cabret, played by Asa Butterfield is an orphan who lives in the walls of the Montparnasse train station in Paris.  He survives by stealing what he needs and makes recompense by keeping the station’s clocks working.  Hugo’s father, played by Jude Law, who recently died in a fire, was a clockmaker and a part time museum curator, which is where he’d found a mysterious automaton.  He showed the robot to Hugo and made several drawings of its inner workings in a notebook.  Both he and Hugo become obsessed with getting it working and discovering its secrets.    When the notebook falls into the hands of an aging embittered Georges Melies, played by Ben Kingsley, who is running a toy shop in the train station, Hugo must get it back with the help of Isabelle, played by Chloe Grace Moretz.  Isabelle is  Melies’s goddaughter, who is also an orphan and therefore living with Melies and his wife Jeanne, played by Helen McCrory.   And Hugo must accomplish all this while being chased by the station inspector, played by Sacha Baron Cohen.

                The most notable thing about this wonderful film is the look of it.  From the meticulously designed costumes to the sumptuous color soaked cinematography every frame is beautiful.  The sets are done in a style that can only be described as cluttered but clean.  It’s like looking at a really high level children’s book illustration, the kind you can get lost in for hours.

                The performances are good as well, especially the two child actors in the leads.  Asa Butterfield plays the waifish Hugo with vulnerability but also with a spine that allows him to survive in his strange circumstances.  He also captures the character’s intelligence, the knowledge and knack he received from his father to fix mechanical things.

                Ben Kingsley delivers his usual superb performance, playing a formerly idealistic and whimsical man fallen onto hard times and into bitterness.  Chloe Grace Moretz is building a resume of great performances.  Helen McCrory portrays Melies’s wife, defending his secret with all her strength while trying to get him to see that it is folly to keep it.  Sacha Baron Cohen brings depth to the character of the station inspector, who could have easily been a one dimensional villain. 

                The theme of the story is that everyone has a place and a purpose and those who don’t know that purpose are broken and need to be fixed.  There’s very little ambiguity about this as the main character says as much and the opening shot of the Paris skyline dissolves into the inner workings of a clock, a perfect visual metaphor for the theme.  This is a children’s film after all.  So the plot is filled with coincidences and intricate plot threads that all contribute to the main plot as well as advancing themselves.  Scorsese and the screenwriter John Logan handle this complexity well, although I suspect that the book has even more of this.

                What you get in the end is pure movie magic.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Martha, played by Elizabeth Olsen, has managed to extricate herself from a small but abusive cult led by Patrick, played by John Hawkes.  Needless to say, she is emotionally fragile.  After escaping, she calls her sister Lucy, played by Sarah Paulson and asks for help.  They haven’t talked for two years since Martha disappeared.  Her sister has had no idea where Martha has been and Martha can’t talk about it.

The script alternates between awkward scenes between an increasingly disturbed Martha trying to deal with what she’s been through and being unresponsive to the efforts of Lucy and her husband Ted, played by Hugh Dancy, to connect to her, and flashbacks to her time in the cult.  Both storylines progress to climaxes, although the cult scenes are more compelling, resulting in a purposefully ambiguous ending.

The film is sold as a thriller but don’t be fooled.  It is very much an American independent film, with a slow pace, natural light cinematography and subdued and oblique performances.  The centerpiece is Elizabeth Olsen’s performance which is outstanding.  She captures all of Martha’s sides, from her reticence to connect with people (which was why she never really belonged in the cult) to the strength of character necessary to escape.  It is a star-making turn.  The other actors, especially John Hawkes are very good as well.

The problem is the rest of it.  This is supposed to be an examination of the inside of Martha’s head.  Some of the events are supposed to blur the line between her flashbacks and reality.  But the techniques that Durkin uses, the long takes of Martha reacting to what the other off-screen characters are saying for example, are self consciously arty and tend to draw us out of her head and consequently the movie.  That might be an interesting juxtaposition if those techniques weren’t used in every independent film.  I don’t see the intellectual justification for using them.  It demotes this film to a middle of the pack independent project, despite the performances.

I’m sure that Elizabeth Olsen is getting plenty of offers right now.  Hopefully, we’ll see her in a better project soon.

The Rum Diary

The Rum Diary is based on a novel by Hunter S. Thompson. He wrote the book in his early 20′s, tried to sell it and then put it away for forty years until he and Johnny Depp found it while going through Thompson’s old papers. The story is set in Puerto Rico in the late 50′s, a time when the island hosted a multitude of Americans there for the weather, business opportunities or the rum.
Paul Kemp, Thompson’s stand-in and played by Johnny Depp takes a job writing for the San Juan daily paper. He goes to such a backwater because he’s tired of the grind in New York. He falls in with the community of Americans, including photographer Bob Sala, played by Michael Rispoli, fellow reporter Moburg, played by Giovanni Ribisi, Sanderson, played by Aaron Eckhart, an ambitious businessman who’s willing to break the rules in order to get ahead, and his beautiful fiancé Chenault, played by Amber Heard. Sanderson has grand ideas to turn Puerto Rico into a capitalist paradise, exploiting the native population in the process. He tries to enlist Paul to write favorably about the scheme, which provides the movie with its central dilemma.
This movie has all the elements of a Hunter S. Thompson narrative: the strange drugs, sudden senseless violence and a cynical world view. It is also Thompson’s story about finding his voice as an author, deciding to take the rage he felt and putting it on the page and Depp does a good job of showing you a passionate writer through the haze of drugs and alcohol. Two other features have been made from Thompson’s work, Where the Buffalo Roams and Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Buffalo is underrated and while Fear and Loathing has its passionate fanbase, I was a little disappointed in it. Without Thompson’s brutally apt descriptions and knack for finding just the right word, all that debauchery gets tedious. The Rum Diary falls right in with these. It has a clearly defined plot which makes the focus tighter and yet it doesn’t quite come up to the mark. Hunter S. Thompson was one of the best wordsmiths in the history of the language. It may be that by trying to translate him to the screen too much of what is best about him is lost.
In truth this has been a tough review to write. The movie is OK but not great. I neither hate it nor love it. I suppose that lack of passion is a criticism in and of itself. Johnny Depp is fine, essentially reprising his role as the good doctor. And the rest of the cast is good as well, especially Michael Rispoli as Bob Sala, who serves as a guide into the more disreputable areas of the island. Giovanni Ribisi is great as Moberg the only half coherent crime reporter.
The film could have been shorter and some of the drug scenes served no purpose. But that’s the only criticism I can really articulate. The Rum Diary is merely OK.

The Ides of March

The Ides of March is George Clooney’s fourth feature film as a director and his second political drama.  The first one, Good Night and Good Luck, was so good I was really looking forward to this one.  They are two different approaches to the topic, however.  Good Night was about the titanic struggle between two men representing freedom and fear.  Ides is a low key Machiavellian melodrama, which isn’t as ambitious nor ultimately as satisfying.

Stephen Myers, played by Ryan Gosling, is an up and coming press agent.  He’s talented and still idealistic enough to believe that his candidate, Mike Morris, played by George Clooney, is above the muck and compromise of pragmatic politics.  His boss, the head of the campaign, Paul Zara, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, knows better and knows how to get Morris the Democratic nomination.  They’ve reached a critical point in the campaign, the Ohio primary, and they are encamped in Cincinnati, frantically running around the state, giving speeches and press conferences.

The drama begins when the manager of the other major candidate, Tom Duffy, played by Paul Giamatti, offers Stephen a job.  What results is plot that twists and turns and manages to test Stephen’s idealism.  The theme, of course, is that everybody in politics is compromised to a certain extent.  That’s the theme of most of these things from All the King’s Men to The Candidate.

This is, of course, a great cast that does a tremendous job.  Gosling is one of the best young actors in Hollywood today.  Giamatti and Hoffman are immensely talented and Clooney does well too, even though he doesn’t demand much from himself in this film.  The script by Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willamon is based partially on Willamon’s play Farragut  North.  It is well paced, with believable dialog and characterization.  There are a few moments when the story’s stage origins show through, but mostly they did a pretty good pretty good job of adapting it to the screen.

It’s the limited scope of the project that hamstrings it.  Political drama always seems weighty and it is jarring to see such a lightweight plot portrayed by this cast and in this manner.  You expect a grand statement but what you get is a serviceable melodrama.