(1986, US, 114 min) Dir Andy Farmer. Cast Dan Aykroyd, Christopher Plummer, Daryl Hannah, Bebe Neuwirth, Dudley Moore

High-pitched farce set in a TV newsroom. The poster, featuring a shrugging Dan Aykroyd with his trousers around his ankles, says everything you need to know about Current Affairs – the satirical potential of the rolling news story of the American intervention into a proxy war in an unnamed Middle Eastern country is lost amidst the film’s focus on the comedic potential of who’s boinking who, where they’re doing it and who’s nearly caught them at it. A roll call will suffice in place of a plot: Aykroyd at his most jabber-mouthed is Sal Danners, the coked-up show runner; Christopher Plummer is Peter Christmas, venerable anchor and voice of steadfast morality; unbeknownst to all he and his co-anchor Felicity Day (Neuwirth) have just ended a clandestine relationship, the rancour of their split simmering on air; Daryl Hannah is Mimsy Butler, the intern that everyone is chasing; Christopher Lloyd is Hal, the narcoleptic cameraman and Dudley Moore is Reginald Blueford, their British correspondent in the Middle East getting into hotter and hotter water as the film goes on. Directed in a slapdash manner by the King of Falling Upwards Andy Farmer, who either throws one hell of a party or has a detailed map of where the bodies are.

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