I know that some of you, for religious or moral or philosophical reasons, refuse to click on any item with a jump. I will forgive you this one time and free you from the obligation of reading my meandering prose if you promise to go see In The Loop this weekend, because it is amazing. Deal? Great. The rest of you still have to read on.

Although it can seem dated and quaint now, the 1980s British series "Yes Minister" was one of the few comedies to get politics right and do so as humorously as possible. In fact, I can only think of one other show that did the same: Armando Iannucci's "The Thick of It," which ran in 2005 and was noted at the time as the 21st century version of its predecessor. While "Minister" focused on the battles between elected government and entrenched civil service, "Thick Of It" dealt with the "government by spin" of recent years; the success of both was due to the central principle that in politics nothing is more powerful than language.

In The Loop, Iannucci's new film, takes that principle to its logical conclusion. The movie, which shares some characters with "The Thick Of It" but is an independent entity, is perhaps the talkiest film in memory, and not in a My Dinner With Andre way; it's all about how words are manipulated, misinterpreted, and misdirected to enforce insupportable policies. It's like a political thriller for semioticians. It happens to be the smartest movie I've seen this year. It's side-splittingly funny, deeply cynical, and pretty much brilliant. It will make seven dollars.

But it shouldn't! It should make a lot more than that, because we need more movies like it. I don't want to scare anyone away by making it sound like it's a movie for smart people, but it is definitely a movie that assumes a certain amount of intelligence on the part of its audience, which is a pleasant surprise. More importantly, it is not based on a toy or a board game from your childhood.

Rather than bog down by rehashing the plot, let me quote directly from the press kit, which is probably bad form, but whatever, I'm not Roger Ebert:

A bumbling British government minister (Tom Hollander) makes a verbal snafu during a TV interview, inadvertently backing a U.S. war in the Middle East. The Prime Minister's venomous communications chief (Peter Capaldi) attempts damage control as tensions quickly escalate on both sides of the pond. Soon the Brits are in Washington, where a U.S. General (James Gandolfini) thinks war is a crazy idea and the beleaguered U.S. Assistant Secretary for Diplomacy (Mimi Kennedy) scrambles to infiltrate the elusive and very hawkish War Committee. Meanwhile, the hapless minister responsible for the mess fuels more flames by attempting to gatecrash various corridors of power while his well-connected young spin doctor (Chris Addison) sleeps his way into diplomatic high jinks with a sexy young intern (Anna Chlumsky), culminating in a feverish United National Security Council vote that makes war seem as "unforseeable" as the slip of the tongue that ignites this crackling, fast-talking political satire showcasing some of the most rollicking wordplay since the heyday of screwball comedy.

This is a pretty good summary. Nice work, press kit people! And let's get the acting out of the way: The cast is uniformly excellent. Hollander, new to me, does a great job of showing the conflict between self-interest and idealism. He's a massive bumbler, but it's a real kind of bumbling, not some Hugh Grant hair-flop job. Chlumsky, (from the 1991 study in Apoidean prejudice My Girl) reminds me of a young Mary-Louise Parker. Gandolfini is Gandolfini. Lately, he's been taking a lot of parts as men in powerful positions who are ultimately ineffectual; a few more and we might be able to see him without immediately thinking "Hey, it's Tony Soprano!" He's very good here. So is David Rasche, who bears a remarkable resemblance to New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine and makes what could be the film's weakest role-a State Department official determined to go to war-an amusing display of hyper-confidence and aggression rather than an easy caricature. Steve Coogan is in it too. Who doesn't love Steve Coogan?

The main performance, though, comes from Peter Capaldi, who plays Malcolm Tucker. Tucker, Director of Communications for the nameless Prime Minister, is a whirl of threat and profanity. Here's a clip:

The profanity is what most people will notice about the character (based in part on Tony Blair's press secretary Alistair Campbell, who famously opened one of his first press briefings with the line, "Explain to me why I should waste my time with a load of wankers like you when you're not going to write anything I tell you anyway.") but it's part of Loop's genius; Tucker's profanity is just another way we use language to get what we want. Capaldi, it should be said, is excellent; if you only remember him as the sweet-faced young Scot in Local Hero (which, if you have not seen, Jesus, why am I bothering with you?) you're in for something of a shock.

The film is not without its flaws: It runs for about an hour and forty-five minutes which, with the intensity of the wordplay, sometimes feels much longer. It suffers from the same problem that plagued A Confederacy of Dunces: there's not one wholly likable character. Sometimes-and I hate to be That Guy, but it's true-the accents can be a little difficult to understand, which means you'll miss a few of the jokes.

But the jokes: By God are they good. Seriously, do me a favor and see this movie. Hopefully it'll do well in Washington (there's a running gag about how the U.S. government is almost fully staffed by overachieving youngsters; "like Bugsy Malone, but with real guns," one character remarks) and New York, but it would be great if it did well everywhere else it was released. Because you know what? I enjoyed the fuck out of it. I hope you do too.