Here's a trailer for Carnage, a movie based on the Yasmina Reza play God of Carnage, about two yuppie couples warring over an incident between their sons. It was filmed in Paris but takes place in, of course, Brooklyn.

The movie couldn't be filmed in Brooklyn because it was directed by Roman Polanski, who can't exactly reenter the United States because everyone here is a total square. So yeah, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, and Kate Winslet all flew over from the States, while Christoph Waltz rode his space gyrocopter from the abandoned carnival planet he lives on, and they made this movie in Paris. Where they shot the movie doesn't really matter, though, as it takes place entirely in one couple's apartment.

The premise is that the couples meet to discuss why Winslet and Waltz's son hurt Foster and Reilly's kid with a big stick. But of course the whole thing devolves into a tableau of how awful and petty and violent grownups really are, so there you go. The play (originally written in French and set in Paris but moved to Brooklyn for the American run) was a hit on Broadway with James Gandolfini, Hope Davis, Jeff Daniels, and Marcia Gay Harden, but I guess they weren't big enough stars to merit the movie. So in come the bigger guns, ready to expose all the embarrassingly base natures of the supposedly civilized bourgeoisie.

If that sounds like a pretty dated attack to take, you're not wrong. Didn't we already destroy yuppie jerks back in the '70s and '80s? Everyone knows they suck these days! The play (I saw it with slightly dimmer lights — Jimmy Smits, Annie Potts, Christine Lahti, and Ken Stott) is a pretty blunt instrument and while entertaining enough as it moves along at a clip, not the frenzy of sharp and new ideas the critics seemed to think it was. Maybe it's a generational thing, maybe those who watched the rise of the yuppie still yearn for their destruction. Me, I feel like these jokes have already been told, and better. But who knows! To each their own.

I doubt the movie will deviate too much from the play, though there will of course be the usual tricky business of converting a single-set play into a living, breathing, moving (as in motion, not emotion) movie. These actors are clearly all up to the task, though I think Winslet and Reilly are slightly miscast. Reilly, while a terrific actor, is a little too doofy for this blustering bear of a guy, and Winslet is too lionessy and strong to believably play so mousy. (Animals!) Christophz Waltz as a cold jerk, yes. And Jodie Foster as an annoying intellectual? I can dig it!

Can you?