Dan Levy performs the most effective of the five monologues in HBO's Coastal Elites.

Rae's character doesn't get many good jokes, and her story is centered on the least crisply defined character.

Particularly because the format feels perilously close to listening to speeches, the more overt the politics become, the less interesting the characters become and the less effective the jokes are.

You learn a lot about who Miriam (Midler's character) is when she talks rapturously about her attachment to The New York Times and says, "Reading the Times online is like having sex with a robot.

I'll just say it: The New York Times online is The New York Times for the Gentiles." (There is also a description of Jared Kushner that is perhaps the most Paul Rudnickian line of the entire thing, which I will not spoil.) You learn less when she's reciting the details of the sexual assault allegations against the president and the reactions to them that his daughter, in real life, has offered.

Not because those facts aren't important, but because repeating them in monologues doesn't really place them in any particular additional context that's useful.

The audience for this film is mostly people who share the anger of its characters; it doesn't feel likely that information recitations will be meaningful to them.

The parts of Coastal Elites that aren't quite as literal in their messaging are more effective.

And sometimes, Coastal Elites achieves that.

Where it works best is in moments that illuminate political questions, but don't just give you a character talking about politics and politicians.

("I just booked a commercial where my boyfriend and I go on a picnic because we both have health insurance.") But when Paulson's character details her father's feelings about John McCain, it just kind of sits on the screen