imagine Wag the Dog without David Mamet

What WAS this thing i just watched? A lot of good comedic ideas ruined with bad timing, bad characterizations and left-field plot points. Exactly WHY did it take Dobbs so long to inject humor into his campaign? Why were the ppl in his group so warm to each other and yet so empty and void of personalities on camera?

Laura Linney was great, but her story was an awkward political thriller forced into what i thought was a political SATIRE! I mean, intrigue, conspiracy, a scary scene, a paranoid drug-induced moment (well-played by Linney, though), a chase, an attack that puts her in the hospital. Where's the punchline? Where's the humor?

From the beginning i couldn't tell where this movie was going. At the halfway mark the entire direction of the plot depended on Eleanore Green waiting to tell Dobbs the truth. That's it. What a poorly written screenplay?

And why was it so easy for these TV people to transition into running a campaign? I'm sure in real life TV people could do it, but in a comedy, shouldn't we exploit this culture clash, make fun of the TV people's inexperience, make them struggle with their new jobs a little. It was all so easy. The presence of Karen Hines--who played Karen in a Canadian show that satirized TV and politics, Newsroom--only made it more glaring that this comedy wasn't working.

What a waste of a terrific cast--Williams, Walken, Black, Linney, Goldblum, and Hines. Imagine how Wag the Dog would've been without the wit and writing talent of David Mament and this is the movie that would've resulted.

What a crock and a disappointment.