director
Christopher
Guest
screenwriters
Christopher
Guest
Eugene Levy
producer
Karen Murphy
cinematographer
Roberto Schaefer
music
Jeffrey C.J. Vanston
editor
Robert Leighton
cast
Parker Posey (Meg Swan)
Michael Hitchcock (Hamilton Swan)
Catherine O'Hara (Cookie Fleck)
Eugene Levy (Gerry Fleck)
Bob Balaban (Dr. Millbank)
Christopher Guest (Harlan Pepper)
Michael McKean (Stefan Vanderhoof)
John Michael Higgins (Scott Donlan)
Jennifer Coolidge (Sherri Ann Cabot)
Jane Lynch (Christy Cummings)
Larry Miller (Max Berman)
Ed Begley Jr. (Hotel Manager)
Fred Willard (Buck Laughlin)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 90m
u.s.
release: 9/29/00
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other christopher
guest films
reviewed on this website:
- almost
heroes
- a mighty wind
|
Can
a comedy be biting and generous-hearted at the same time? Any
comedy walks a fine line between making its characters laughable
and making them laughing stocks; it's the fine line, as someone
once said, between clever and stupid. Christopher Guest, in his
films The Big Picture, Waiting for Guffman, and
his new one, Best in Show, walks this line so skillfully
that you never worry whether your laughter is powered by condescension
(as it so often is with comedies you hate yourself in the morning
for laughing at).
Guest had an unfortunate career blip a couple years back with
the excruciating Chris Farley swan song Almost
Heroes, which he directed but did not write (it showed).
Best in Show finds him back in his very specialized element:
Some people were put here to write poems, some were meant to
compose symphonies -- Guest was born to make mockumentaries.
Though he didn't invent the subgenre, he has perfected it, starting
with his contribution to the hallowed classic This Is Spinal
Tap. (Guest showed with The Big Picture that he can
score with "straight" narrative comedy, too.) Guest
seems happiest when poking a flashlight into obscure, hapless
offshoots of entertainment -- Waiting for Guffman's regional-theater
troupe, Spinal Tap's on-their-uppers heavy-metal band
-- and Best in Show finds him examining dog-show contestants,
mainly the humans whose dogs are competing.
Best in Show has a similar arc to 1999's flawed beauty-pageant
mockumentary Drop Dead Gorgeous,
only without that film's self-consciously "dark" murder
plot. Guest wastes no time overplotting; he simply introduces
the characters and their shared goal, then watches what happens.
To my great relief, there are no sitcom-level conflicts, no backstage
quarrels or sabotage between the dog owners (who hardly interact
with each other). Guest stays with the specific, disparate people
who have all come here to take home the "Best in Show"
trophy.
It's Guest's particular genius to come up with a premise, work
up a basic blueprint of a script (he developed this one with
Eugene Levy), and then cast actors who can improvise and bring
their characters above stereotype. Certainly the film has more
potential stereotypes than you could shake a squeak toy
at. There's the bland Florida couple (Levy and Catherine O'Hara)
-- he with two left feet (literally), she with an impressive
sexual past. There's the opposites-attract gay couple, a reserved
hairdresser (Michael McKean) and an unapologetic flamer (John
Michael Higgins). There's an uptight yuppie couple (Parker Posey
and Michael Hitchcock) who bonded over their mutual passion for
catalogs. There's a trophy wife (Jennifer Coolidge) who seems
built out of collagen, and her butch dog handler (Jane Lynch).
There's a drawling good-ol'-boy (Guest himself) who dotes on
his dachshund.
Yet, uniformly, the cast refuses to let us look down on these
people. Like Waiting for Guffman, the movie gets its laughs
by letting its people talk and reveal themselves unconsciously.
They're silly -- this is a comedy -- but never beyond
recognition. Eugene Levy, for instance, endows his geeky character
with affectionate self-awareness (just as he did playing the
too-helpful dad in American Pie).
You expect his left-footedness to pay off, perhaps when he's
walking his dog during the climactic show, but despite planting
the detail that Levy used to walk in circles due to his left
feet, Guest doesn't go for a cheap laugh. Most other comedies
would.
Most other comedies also wouldn't find time for Fred Willard,
as the show's on-air commentator, who starts off poorly and gets
hilariously worse, spiraling off into increasingly irrelevant
musings ("How much do you think I can bench-press?"
he asks his baffled British co-chair). While the contestants
sit or pace in nervous silence, Fred Willard takes over the movie,
treating us to one riotous stream-of-consciousness soliloquy
after another (his comparison of a defeated dog to a certain
baseball icon is worth the ticket price by itself). Best in
Show isn't really about the dogs; it's about the goal-oriented
humans flitting around the center of this mundane event. Christopher
Guest sees the deep comedy in people obsessed with things most
of us would find ridiculous, but he doesn't have the heart to
ridicule them for it. |