Grade: B+

Verdict: Mamet lite, but still a lot of fun.

Details: Starring William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Rated R for profanity and brief sexual images. One hour, 46 minutes.

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Review: David Mamet channels the spirit of '40s screwball-comedy connoisseur Preston Sturges in “State and Main,” a delicious satire of show-biz silliness and small-town savvy. This may not be Mamet at his biting best, but the film is so sharply written and well-acted that you probably won't care.

The movie begins as the cast and crew of “The Old Mill” descend on the tiny hamlet of Waterford, Vt. The advance filmmaking troops, so to speak, are led by the picture's director, Walt Price (Mamet regular William H. Macy). Walt is the kind of Hollywood survivor who's handled everything from randy stars to raging producers. Whenever he's caught in an, um, exaggeration, he's quick to point out, “It's not a lie. It's a gift for fiction.”

The guy with a true gift for fiction (not lies) is the film's writer, Joe White (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a Broadway baby in the Hollywood jungle for the first time. Barraged with requests for rewrites ranging from figuring out how to write out the old mill — Waterford's burned in the '60s — to figuring out a way to pull off a product placement for a computer company in a 19th-century period flick, he slowly realizes he may be the lone sheep among wolves.

Who, along with wily Walt, include a preening star (Alec Baldwin) with a taste for underage girls (“Everyone needs a hobby,” he says); a skittish leading lady (Sarah Jessica Parker) who's decided that her contractually agreed-on nude scene needs another $800,000 for her to “feel” the moment (“I don't know what her problem is,” rails Walt. “She takes her shirt off to do a voice-over”); and a cellphone-addicted producer (David Paymer) who works in two gears: manipulation and rage.

Joe's one ray of hope is Ann (Rebecca Pidgeon), the town intellectual who runs the only bookshop and moonlights as the director of the community theater. She can also quote from Joe's play, “Anguish.” Mamet juggles these diverse characters — and perhaps a half dozen more — with admirable assurance. And, while Hollywood is his main target, he also gets off a few good jokes about how the local “yokels” aren't just crusty innocents. Two old geezers meet at the corner coffee shop to discuss per-screen averages.

Hoffman gives another one of his expertly centered portrayals as the movie's emotional center. Macy tap-dances from one crisis to the next with the dexterity of one of Mamet's “Glengarry Glen Ross” salesmen. Baldwin and Parker use their considerable skills to turn potential stereotypes into smart little satiric sketches. Even Pigeon, aka Mrs. Mamet, comes off reasonably well. Her stilted, self-conscious delivery makes perfect sense for a small-town “artiste.”

Perhaps because he knows that “State and Main” is, at heart, little more than a bright trifle, Mamet keeps the pace fast and the plots and subplots churning. At one point Pigeon is advised to make her own fun and she replies in her usual deadpan, “Everyone makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment.”

Mamet makes a lot of fun here. And, boy, is it entertainment.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution