This is not a great Coen brothers’ film. Nor is it one of their bewildering excursions off the deep end. It’s funny, sometimes delightful, sometimes a little sad, with dialogue that sounds perfectly logical until you listen a little more carefully and realize all of these people are mad. The movie is only 96 minutes long. That’s long enough for a movie, but this time, I dunno, I thought the end felt like it arrived a little arbitrarily.

A dark goofball comedy about assorted doofuses in Washington, D.C., only some of whom work for the government, this short, snappy picture from the Coen Brothers - of ‘No Country for Old Men’ fame - tries to mate sex farce with a satire of a paranoid political thriller, with arch and ungainly results.