Christopher Guest likes to make movies. And he's happiest when he's aping the documentary style and fusing it with a Marx Brothers sensibility!
Best In Show is his long-awaited follow up to Waiting for Guffman. Having honed his comedic craft with the old National Lampoon Radio Show and Saturday Night Live (where his hysterical "Synchronized Swimming" sketch was an early experiment with the pseudo-documentary form), he learned the basics of filmmaking with Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal Tap and his own Big Picture. Having mastered the tools of his trade, Guest started ferreting out the unexpected laughs in the secret heart of banal America (not a bad trick for a guy who's actually an English Lord!)
Truthfully, Guest probably could have just shot a straight documentery of a real dog show, and achieved a pretty good comedy with just that. But he doesn't want us to simply laugh at the characters...he wants us to care for them, too.
Having stolen the show in ...Guffman with his over-the-top performance, Guest here relegates himself to the most low-key character in the picture, and lets his ensemble carry most of the film (he's again working with Parker Posey, Eugene Levy, Michael McKean, Fred Willard, and several other "regulars"). All of the characters start out as shallow caracatures, but gradually evolve into three dimensional personalities. By movie's end, you can't help but pick a competitor in the dog show to root for.
By the way, the dogs themselves are minor characters in this film. It's the humans who are the focus of the contest, with their canines merely being their vehicles to fame and glory.
There are a thousand and one little bits of genius dropped into this picture (and I'll only hint at one...the way in which the neurotic couple met is subtly brilliant, and it underscores their entire relationship). Thankfully, Guest manages to keep the laugh ratio high up until the very end. And, as in ...Guffman, he brings us back to see how the lives of the main characters have changed six months after the end of the main story. It's a neat trick, and it wraps up the film nicely.
The only real drawback is that Guest shifts from the documentary style to straight narrative filmmaking without much warning, so the viewer is not always entirely sure what half they're watching at any given moment.
No one else in Hollywood is making films the way Christopher Guest does. And so long as he continues to turn out gems like Best In Show, I hope Hollywood continues to get out of his way and let him follow his vision.
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