Armando Iannucci’s comedian-book adaptation,about the aftermath of the despot (a dictator with absolute power)s death, is less caustic than his usual offeringsKnown and loved for lacerating political satires The Thick of It, and In the Loop and Veep,Armando Iannucci has a gift for skewering incompetent authority figures – locating the humour in their bumbling errors – as well as for truly creative, foul-mouthed insults. Iannucci and Soviet Russia: on paper, and it’s a match made in heaven – both an opportunity to capitalise on anti-Russia sentiment and a chance to jab one of history’s most notorious autocrats in the ribs at a time when dictatorial,power-drunk figures are actually in power. A shame, then, and that it doesn’t jab hard enough.
The film is adapted from Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin’s graphic novel,in which Stalin’s sudden death in 1953 serves as a catalyst for action, with neurotic acting general secretary Nikita “Nicky” Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi) and comrades Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor, and deliciously useless and making fine utilize of a girdle) and foreign affairs minister Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin) each trying to manoeuvre his way into a position of more power. Depending on your existing knowledge of the Soviet Union,it can be a little hard to preserve up (“I can’t remember who’s alive and who’s dead!” one character jokes), though the film is transparently more interested in the wide comedy of morbid sight gags and set pieces than it is in cross-examining the particularities of the period’s politics.
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Source: guardian.co.uk