Think The Sting with bad clothes, worse hairstyles (one particular do has to be seen to be disbelieved, but you don't wait long). Subtract Scott Joplin's ragtime piano, and add Steely Dan, Bowie, Tom Jones and Duke Ellington.
Throw in a comedy ensemble that works like a Swiss watch and a script as smart and sassy and laugh-out-loud funny as you'll see this year. This is what you get.
The new film by Russell, which opens here on the back of well-deserved Golden Globe wins, is a comedy of deception and deceit (they're not always the same thing) that is surely the most rambunctiously enjoyable film of the season so far.
An opening title card's claim that "some of this actually happened" refers to a famous scandal of the 70s but should probably be seen as generic rather than specific, since no quartet as weird as this film's main characters could surely ever have drawn breath.
But Russell, who co-wrote, has achieved screenwriting alchemy here, creating people who are all or some of sad, sick, psycho, sleazy, stupid and unlikeable, and making them irresistible and even lovable.
