Show Me a Hero arrives at a time when political leadership in the U.S. is increasingly extreme, less pragmatic, in platform and practice. Also, race relations in our country are not good. It was easy for most to believe they weren’t racist when groups like the Ku Klux Klan provided convenient figureheads. We’ve only begun to understand that institutional racism is the part of the iceberg underneath the water, vast and intractable.

All acting is mimicry – the trappings of speech and bearing are elemental building blocks for a performer. What’s intriguing about The Trip is that Coogan and Brydon are also mimicking themselves, even as they mimic others.

Scene: An abandoned street, replete with broken windows and graffiti-covered walls. Empty bottles and drug paraphernalia litter the pavement. A streetlight flickers. The camera settles on a dented trashcan, toppled over, garbage spilling onto the sidewalk. We hear footsteps approaching, and see two spiky-haired silhouettes enter the frame.

It was a grin-filled, charming evening, borne effortlessly on the singing, dancing, wisecracking shoulders of Megan Breit and Eddie Rose. Breit and Rose were born decades after the golden age of screwball comedy, but it must be in their genes, or maybe they were inhabited by some kind of theatrical spirit. Nice work, indeed.