“It’s a Disaster" is a comedy. The casting of David Cross (“Arrested Development,” “Mr. Show”) and several Second City Chicago alumni, should tip you off to that. But I’m not sure I’d describe the movie as a “black comedy,” although the specter of imminent annihilation is, I grant you, a little on the “dark” side. This is more like a comedy of manners — really bad manners. The humor is indirect and relatively low-key, like the random sirens outside that nobody pays any attention to. (Why would they? They’re just sirens. Only later do the insistent wails of emergency vehicles take on greater significance.)

The movie’s funniest touches are quiet flashes of character, expertly timed and nimbly played by a deft ensemble. “It’s a Disaster” is consistently funny, but you wince more often than you laugh out loud. It’s like a Christopher Guest improvisational farce with the volume turned down to 5. 

Hosts Emma (Erinn Hayes) and Pete (Blaise Miller) are preparing to drop their own relationship bombshell on their friends. Hedy (America Ferrera) and Shane (Jeff Grace) are stuck in a six-year engagement with no end in sight. Lexi (Rachel Boston) and Buck (Kevin M. Brennan) fancy themselves as free-spirited rebels (she plays the glockenspiel, man). Nervous Tracy (Julia Stiles) is introducing her friends to mild-mannered Glenn (Cross) on their third date. 

The movie’s sense of humor is expressed in its opening credits, which appear over a slow reverse-zoom on a vintage black-and-white photograph of a tropical beach, with palm trees and a couple of rustic, thatched-roof shelters in the foreground. At some point you notice a huge column rising out of the water in the distance. Eventually you see that it’s topped by a mushroom cloud. It’s an image of the 1946 Bikini Atoll nuclear test. That’s the way things detonate in “It’s a Disaster”: gradually building up to climactic revelations (like Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” and Ravel’s “Bolero” on the soundtrack), always teetering on the brink of … disaster. 

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46iq6xlkWKxqr%2FArKueql1nfXJ%2F