Runtime: 90 minutes
Directed by: Christopher Guest
Starring: A great cast. What a deep bench it has.
From: Warner Brothers/Castle Rock Entertainment
Me giving up on a new streaming release 10 minutes in because it was a nonstop torrent of F-bombs shouldn’t be too surprising to longtime readers-the fact that the film also had a flagrant logical fallacy made it all the easier to hit “stop”, never to return. What may be surprising or perhaps even a little galling to some: I’d never seen any of the Christopher Guest mockumentaries he’s directed despite the lavish praise they’ve received all these years… well, except the one that was released on Netflix, but that’s the “magic” of Netflix, I suppose—and that was long before their mandate of “verbally explaining the plot on multiple occasions because many of our viewers are on phones while watching.” Sigh…
Back on topic, I was happy that while droll humor isn’t always my thing (the same goes for improv humor), this was quite funny. I’ve never watched any dog shows-even the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show-yet that was irrelevant in this case. Wacky characters of wildly different personalities bring their pooches to a major dog show in Philadelphia. It’s everyone from a campy homosexual male couple and a North Carolina fisherman to an amazingly stressed couple and an amazingly dorky Eugene Levy who has a wife… well, I don’t want to shame Catherine O’Hara’s character as I could get canceled for such things now!
The characters are all peculiar and are poked fun at without being cruelly mocked too harshly. Arguably, Fred Willard was the highlight as the color commentator of the dog show due to his constant remarks that were either cheesy cliches or bizarre off the wall statements. That said, I was entertained by all the main players; I wasn’t let down by a film that had Levy & his fake teeth, O’Hara, Michael McKean, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch, Parker Posey, Larry Miller, and Guest himself in a key role, among others. There’s also a small part for That Guy actor Don S. Davis, a distinctive-looking older bald man who I’m sure many will recognize for his recurring role on Twin Peaks but as that’s still a show I’ve never tackled (I know, I know) he’s best known to me for small roles in a few random 80’s and 90’s pictures.
Comedy with awkward characters and humor as dry as a biscuit is not something I desire to view constantly so it is probable that months will pass by before I give something like Waiting for Guffman or A Mighty Wind a shot. Be that as it may, Best in Show thankfully wasn’t a disappointment. It spoofed the inherent absurdities of dog shows in a playful way-personally, I was happy to view many different varieties of dogs throughout. As modern “comedies” leave me cold, I’m glad to find one from the past worth seeing-and the runtime of 90 minutes is a bonus.
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