WHEN movies learned to speak and TV sitcoms learned how to find common cause in stupidity, farce rather lost its honoured place at the pinnacle of American comedy. But Peter Bogdanovich’s new film rather lays that notion to rest.

It follows the shenanigans attending a bunch of theatricals preparing to cast a new play, a teenage callgirl with acting aspirations, a judge obsessed with the young woman’s innocent freshness and the play’s director (whose wife thinks he loves only her).

Then there’s an author who’s having a thing with the psychiatrist who’s treating the judge’s obsession, a private eye who’s also the dramatist’s father and whom the judge has engaged to tail the pretty girl and a media star who once dallied with the director’s wife and wants to do it again.

These are some of the main characters in a long list that make this movie a lotta fun.

Bringing life to plot and characters is a cast led by Owen Wilson as the wayward husband, Imogen Poots as the pretty girl, Jennifer Aniston as the hysterical psychiatrist, Rhys Ifans as the media star, Austin Pendleton as the judge and Kathryn Hahn as the wife who’s not above playing away. They and the supporting cast never miss a beat in a film that does honour to a theatrical genre that for six centuries has evaluated society’s foibles with laughter, which really is a great medicine.

At Palace Electric