Best in Show
Christopher Guest is a brilliant man. He knows how to fill his movies with actors who are equal to the task he lays out for them: improvise a movie based on story structure. “Build your own characters,” spake Lord Haden-Guest, “Speak in the voices you create for themselves, and I will provide the machinery to make it all into a movie.” This is what he did with Waiting for Guffman, and now with Best In Show. The casts are near identical, with the added bonus of Stiffler’s Mom (Jennifer Coolidge) from American Pie as a high maintenance gold-digger princess type. The movies are near identical as well: a series of interviews about the event that will change everything for everyone, the event itself, and a kind of lengthy coda to wrap things up.
Unfortunately, what is most amazing about movies like these does not always read as well as it could. Maybe I am jaded, and am so surrounded by people who can assume other characters and carry on long conversations in their roles, who can mock a personality type with love and with amusement, that I cannot recognize the genius of doing it on the big screen. Heaven knows I appreciate improvisation! But Guffman and Best In Show are both very well-acted character studies, with sly and knowing digs at the people they make fun of (in Guffman’s case, small town stage divas, in Best Of Show’s case, serious dog-show contestants), with not much of a rewarding journey to follow them on.
I love Fred Willard, I love Catherine O’Hara, Christopher Guest, Parker Posey, Larry Miller, and others…but I want them to interact more. I want them to tell me a story with their extravagant gifts, not just amuse me by portraying someone extremely interesting. Willard is a master at being square, square, square, and his delivery is fantastic. He’s paired. apparently, with a real dog show expert, who clearly is terrified of what is coming out of Fred’s mouth, and I was tickled pink. The funniest bits in the movie are just delightfully executed character moments. There is no buildup or plot punch, and so I walk away, as I did from Guffman, unsatisfied somehow.
Far be it from me to say, this is no good - because for what it is, it is marvelous. Improvised movies are an amazing risk, an amazing leap - and to have such fantastic characters and be in such amazing venues (surely shooting the dog show sequences had to be the most arduous task in the world!) is a treat - but unlike This Is Spinal Tap, the story itself is not the reward. I am loathe to even mention the name of the beast in the same review as Lord Haden-Guest, but perhaps that is why Saturday Night Live is still on the air - some people just want to see a funny person and laugh at how they act. That person doesn’t have to go through anything or change or interact with anyone other than a straight man who plays up their wackiness. If we could have had more interaction, say, between Coolidge and O’Hara, or Michael Hitchcock (Parker’s spouse in the film), I think the storyline of them meeting to compete in the dog show would have more punch. Like Duets, it’s a bunch of smaller stories congregating into a quick ending…oh but the coda is not so quick either.
Maybe I do take pure character studies for granted, but for me, it is not enough to see funny people, although it is an important part of a good nutritious entertainment. I need to see the sparks that happen between people, the relationships. It is what theatre is all about. The conflict of them competing in the show is artificial, not based on their personalities.
OK, enough. Posey and Hitchcock have hit Generica the Beautiful on the head - they are a perfect example of all that is wrong with this country, and they do it unashamedly. Hitchcock himself was once rude to me and my friends, so I was pleased to be able to loathe his character as a person. Guest is far away from his usual type of an intellectual (or a self-impression of an intellectual) and he’s more lovable than I have seen him in years. He even, somehow, sold me on the idea of a hound dog as a pet. O’Hara and Eugene Levy play an unlikely married couple, with some amusing recall jokes (but if I know Levy/Guest, I think the recurring joke was always a surprise to O’Hara, making me love her even more for being so good at what she does). Fred Willard - I would stalk you if it wasn’t illegal and immoral, you are the coolest! Finally, I loved Stiffler’s Mom as Stiffler’s Mom, but I really think she has some serious potential in this kind of venue.. She looked uncomfortable, but game, and that is half the battle. It’s definitely worth seeing, I just didn’t laugh as much as I’d hoped.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 10/13/00
Time in minutes 90
Director Christopher Guest
Studio Warner Brothers
