Oddly, the script for this was by Georgia Pritchett and Will Smith, who are among Iannucci's UK collaborators and were also contributors to "The Thick of It."

What to make of someone who didn't notice the humor in Greenaway's much goofier recent films, who points at Dennehy's impenetrable Kracklite as an example of the director getting character right or who thinks the "Que Viva Mexico" subplot in "Eisenstein" is an example of a coded conspiracy? Maybe the real critique of…