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BEST IN SHOW
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BEST IN SHOW, Christopher Guest’s third mockumentary after THIS IS SPINAL TAP (directed by Rob Reiner, not Guest, and the difference is relevant) and WAITING FOR GUFFMAN, follows a inbred pack of pure-bred dog owners -- or is that a pure-bred pack of inbred dog owners? -- as they converge, in Bridge of San Luis Rey style, on the year's biggest event, the Mayflower Dog Show in Philadelphia.
Like Woody Allen, Guest uses a guest list of recurring actors -- Fred Willard, Michael McKean, Bob Balaban, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy (the latter two Second City alumni) -- and himself takes a role. Unlike Allen, his acting never disrupts the movies. So completely does Guest assume the po' Carolina accent of bloodhound trainer Harlan Pepper that we were halfway through this movie before Nancy recognized him. As an actor Guest is unbelievably good, with Zelig-like chameleon submersion in characters high (the six-fingered man in THE PRINCESS BRIDE) and low (Nigel Tufnel in SPINAL TAP), in every case with dead-on accents and mannerisms.
Mockumentaries come in two basic types: vertical (such as TAP) that follow a group of characters over time, and horizontal (such as GUFFMAN or the mockumentary's apotheoses, Altman's NASHVILLE and SHORT CUTS) that galvanize the ensemble around a single event. BEST IN SHOW is horizontal, so the characters have little interaction one with the other, even at story's end when, each of them having won in his or her own category, they compete briefly for best in show.
As a director, Guest is -- well -- a great actor. The movie was largely improvised and shot in ten-minute takes that Guest then wove together. The result has little if any linking story beyond the framing event of the Mayflower itself. There *are* scintillating moments -- Fred Willard's atrociously inane dog commentary, gay trainers Stefan (Michael McKean) and Scott (John Michael Higgins) packing for the trip ("Six kimonos? We're going to be there 48 hours." "You're right, make it seven"), and trainer Christy Cummings (Jane Lynch) proudly describing her new magazine AMERICAN BITCH ("for the lesbian pure-bred dog owner") -- but to me these moments were mostly isolated. Only in Catherine O'Hara's Cookie Fleck (nee Googleman) did we have a recurring gag that got funnier each time it reappeared. Though Nancy found the movie's treatment of his characters sympathetic, I thought it made mean-spirited fun of them in a way that neither GUFFMAN nor TAP did.
Neither BEST IN SHOW (nor, for that matter, WAITING FOR GUFFMAN) will ever match SPINAL TAP for sustained hilarity. Aside from a better supporting cast (Rob Reiner, Fran Drescher, Patrick Macnee), self-important heavy-metal rock is more recognizable and an infinitely more inflated target, and in TAP's songs -- Sex Farm Woman, Gimme Some Money, Big Bottom -- are all side-splitting.
When deciding on movies, I had been lobbying for BEST IN SHOW, Nancy had been skeptical, so it was something of a surprise that she liked the movie much more than I did. Perhaps one affected the other. Laughter is contagious, both other people's and one's own. Nancy came with low expectations, started laughing early, and never really stopped. I came anxious that she enjoy it, disliked the opening gag (about two left feet), and never fully recovered.
If you *loved* TAP and like GUFFMAN, you'll like BEST IN SHOW. If you didn't like even TAP, by all means stay away.