It’s fun to watch the scenery get chewed, and nobody chews scene like Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman. George Clooney and Ryan Gosling are both compelling straight-man characters to swirl madness around. I should probably love it, but this is a very well-crafted movie with a slew of good performances that somehow doesn’t add up to anything.

Here’s the problem. I can’t get it up for Mr. Smith goes to Washington anymore. The film’s final act relies on your ability to be disillusioned by the clay feet of political figures, and I can’t play along. Of course there are clay feet. Of course many pols are a step ahead of some scandal or other. And of course, players in the political game make ugly compromises to get to the things that matter to them. If you own a television, you can’t possibly be surprised by that stuff in 2011.

We see the action through the eyes of a successful young campaign manager, and that may be where it goes wrong. It’s not really a sympathetic profession. Gosling does what he can to make his character seem earnest and genuinely dismayed at the rot he uncovers, but I just could never get past the idea that he could never have gotten through a decade’s worth of these campaigns without getting inured to garden-variety scandal.

I realize I may be saying more about my cynicism than this movie, and if you’re of a more forgiving mindset you might have a good time.