Whiskey Tango Foxtrot – 7.5

It’s rather gutsy to make a romantic comedy about the war in Afghanistan – what with all those people dying, not to mention the overlying issue of what our army is doing there in the first place – but Tina Fey handled that challenge admirably. What she didn’t do was convince anyone she was a war correspondent; she was Tina Fey, which was fun to watch, as usual, but made it hard to take anything seriously. Arguably, that was the point – no Zero Dark Thirty here – but you got the sense that this was supposed to be more than a series of skits. Billy Bob Thornton was excellent: he made me proud of the Marines and, while not justifying our presence in Afghanistan, made it seem relatively innocuous. One last note: there was no particular justification for the movie’s title, which was recently used, similarly without justification, on one of the better books I’ve read.