Our Brand is Crisis in 200 Words or Less

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In theory I was down with David Gordon Green's political satire Our Brand is Crisis - I like David Gordon Green and I like satire! - but in practice it plays like it lays and it lays D.O.A. Where's the bite? The bark? This thing's a dog but not the proper sort, sadly. So many strange toothless decisions were made that leave its gums flapping in the wind - it's a satire that forgets the satire in place of Sandy Bullock barfing a lot. All the actual politics are scrubbed as sheen-flat as possible - it's set in Bolivia I guess to distance itself from our own politics, but then it doesn't really seem to know anything about Bolivia, or have any insight to share either. (It feels very much like the George Clooney death-rattle The Ides of March, so it doesn't surprise me that Clooney and his partner Grant Heslov also produced this). Anyway on the "positive" side there is a wacky chase sequence that feels positively Benny-Hill-esque (take what you can get, people) and bonus points for the Llama gag and for all of Scoot's primo suits, I guess.

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