Normally when I review a comedy, I try not to give away too many of the good gags, but with the brilliantly funny political satire "In the Loop" (four stars out of four), that's not a concern. Nearly every joke is hilarious, and the volume of them so great that even if I ruin a few over the course of the next few paragraphs, you can be assured hundreds are left, waiting to be discovered. The movie's furious flow of one-liners ensures that you're never bored and demonstrates just how quickly things can get out of hand at the highest levels of government, even when something so serious as a potential war hangs in the balance.

The farce begins when Simon Foster (Tom Hollander, who plays one of the villains in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies), a British bureaucrat, says in a radio interview that war in the Middle East is "unforeseeable." That puts him at odds with the official stance of the prime minister, who sends over Malcolm Tucker, his director of communications (Peter Capaldi), to attempt to spin things back into place, in part by telling reporters, "You may have heard him say that, but he didn't say that."

But, as is typical of the news cycle these days, one comment can create a firestorm, and Foster becomes caught between his personal anti-war views and wanting to appear to be supportive of the prime minister, who is backing the United States in its war plans. Every statement Foster gives to the media gets him into further trouble, as when he warns that Britain must be "prepared to climb the mountain of conflict," a line Tucker says makes him sound like "Nazi Julie Andrews." Meanwhile, an American assistant secretary of state (Mimi Kennedy) who's against the war and a pacifist general (James Gandolfini) align themselves with Foster and against a State Department bigwig (David Rasche) who's pushing for war. Politics, obviously, can be a complicated business.

Unfortunately, the people running that business are often petty and immature. "In the Loop" depicts many of those in charge on the American side as hopelessly young for their jobs, but some of the Brits, like a political adviser (Chris Addison) who's so excited to be in a limousine during a diplomatic trip to Washington that he leans out the window to capture video with his cell phone, aren't much better. And all the while, everyone is doing everything they can -- including lying and stabbing friends in the back -- not to see that the correct decision is made for the people, but to ensure that they simply remain part of the process and, in turn, relevant to their peers.

The entire cast -- which also includes Anna Chlumsky as an assistant, Zach Woods as her bitter rival and Steve Coogan as a British constituent who doesn't care a bit about the war, only about the teetering brick wall in his mother's garden -- is tremendous. Capaldi, though, will probably see the biggest bump in his Hollywood stock for playing Tucker, a man who lets loose with any number of remarkably profane tirades over the course of the film and begins one chewing-out by saying, "I don't want to read you the riot act, but I am going to have to read you some extracts from the riot act."

"In the Loop" was directed by Armando Iannucci and written by Iannucci and three others who are expanding on the British TV show "The Thick of It" (which can be seen on YouTube), and while the movie looks sort of like an episode of the original version of "The Office," it's an original and probably the funniest movie I've seen all year. (Thanks, by the way, to the Encore Theater in Elkhart for bringing it to the area.)

And if some of the jokes get past you, either because they're coming too fast, you're not quick enough to decipher the British accents or you're laughing too hard to hear them, well, that's just another reason to see "In the Loop" again.

DOUBLE FEATURE

Anna Chlumsky, who plays government aide Liza Weld in "In the Loop," is now 18 years removed from her breakout role in the 1991 family film "My Girl" (two stars), where she starred as Vada, an 11-year-old girl whose mother died after giving birth to her and whose father (Dan Aykroyd) runs a funeral home. Macaulay Culkin, who was fresh off "Home Alone" when he made this film, plays Thomas J., a sickly kid who becomes Vada's best friend. "My Girl" turns into a tearjerker as it goes along and is often very moving, though just as often a bit heavy-handed.