Early on in David Mamet's (The Spanish Prisoner, The Winslow Boy) latest staccato talk-fest - this one a venomous screwball comedy - the-crew of a Hollywood movie, on location in a small Vermont town, are bemoaning the loss of the old mill, burnt to the ground years before. "Oh well, we'll lose the mill scenes." "We'll lose the mill?" "Yeah, we'll lose the mill." "Okay, no big deal, we'll lose the mill..." Cue camera to pan down to the script in the hands of the dumbfounded writer (Philip Seymour Hoffman at his befuddled best). The title of the film they are allegedly making? The Old Mill...

That nice visual joke sets the absurdist tone for what is at once a love letter to the Hollywood Dream Factory and an excoriation of same. Led by the passive-aggressive director Walt Price (Mamet fave William H. Macy), who can sweet-talk and browbeat in equal measure, the cast and crew of "The Old Mill" descend like a Force 9 Hurricane upon the sleepy town of Waterford, Vermont. Lead actors Bob Berrenger and Claire Wellesley (a paunchy Alec Baldwin and Sarah Jessica Parker, respectively, both suitably over-the-top) bring their own peccadilloes and neurosis to the setting: he has a penchant for under-age girls - the reason the production had to move from their previous New England location - and she is adamant about not showing her breasts, despite having signed a contract explicitly calling for nudity.

Meanwhile, hapless writer Joseph Turner White (Hoffman), ecstatic at having his script produced, is slowly being destroyed by the constant watering down of his "vision." (If State and Main has a theme, it is the ridiculously low status accorded the writer in contemporary Hollywood, a situation Mamet has overcome by becoming a writer-director.). Enter the beautiful and wise local bookstore owner Ann Black (Mamet's real-life partner Rebecca Pidgeon) to serve as muse and love interest to the confused White.

Crises arise faster than thunderstorms on the prairies and are dealt with in the harshest possible manner - after all, time is money and Hollywood is all about money, as State and Main makes no bones about. All seems to be going as smoothly as possible - i.e. disaster after disaster, horrible compromise after horrible compromise - until Bob Berrenger's "hobby," as he calls his insatiable desire for young girls, threatens to shut down the production for good...

State and Main is never less than enjoyable thanks to excellent work from a great ensemble cast. The standouts are Philip Seymour Hoffman (Boogie Nights, Magnolia), who goes from wide-eyed innocent to cynical veteran over the course of the film shoot, and Alec Baldwin (State and Main's executive producer), who takes the piss out of his own movie star status with self-deprecating wit. But the movie is not without its faults.

Aside from the glee with which the leads attack their roles, one of the best aspects of State and Main is also one of the film's problems: the mile-a-minute dialogue characteristic of the screwball comedy genre. Mamet's fast-paced, repetitive style would seem ideally suited to his subject, but all too often the jokes fall flat or are so scabrous as to make you wonder if Mamet has completely given in to a misanthropic world view. Still, if you throw everything at the wall, some of it's bound to stick, and State and Main has enough sticking to its walls to make it a much better than average evening out at the movies.