Flak Magazine: Review of Best In Show, 10-09-00

Lampooning the world of obsessive dog owners might be as simple as getting a mutt to devour a box of Snausages, but it's doubtful anyone could do it as well as Christopher Guest. The Spinal Tap collaborator and Waiting for Guffman director has a tight leash on the funny bone again with Best in Show. While Guest's latest film doesn't quite measure up to those other works, it comes close enough to make Best in Show a candidate for the year's best comedy.

This mockumentary follows five entrants — all obsessive types likely to love their doggie more than their spouse, lover or self — to the annual Mayflower Dog Show in search of the coveted blue ribbon. Best of Show was done without a script, its dialogue improvised, which is why Guest relies heavily on improv heavyweights like Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara, both former co-conspirators from Canada's comedy machine "SCTV", to shoulder the load.

While the incredible chemistry between Levy and O'Hara provides the movie with its best running gag — the constant parade of O'Hara's ex-lovers — other couplings prove just as hilarious. We meet Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock in a counselor's office as they agonize over their Weimaraner, who has allegedly been traumatized by seeing the newlyweds copulate. And Michael McKean and John Michael Higgins play a couple whose Shih Tzu becomes a precious product of their meticulous, prim ways.

The film moves along briskly and the laughs may slow, but they never stop. Best in Show only gets away from Guest when he goes for broke. He gets greedy at the end when we get a "six months later" update on how the gang is doing. One of the conclusions hits the spot, but the others, while funny, are sitcom laughs. Waiting for Guffman, on the other hand, didn't suffer from this in the slightest.

The key to the mockumentary format is subtlety, and so it's the nuances of these characters make them great. The fact that Posey and Hitchcock fell in love sitting in two different Starbucks across the street from one another is funny, but that they somehow both have braces makes it all the funnier. Anna Nicole Smith-wannabe Coolidge is funny sitting next to her one-foot-in-the-grave husband, but that she cites soup as a commonality makes it priceless.

McKean and Higgins exemplify this battle of go-for-broke laughs versus subtlety. Though Higgins is great, his outrageous outfits and limp wrists are typically flamboyant and less successful that McKean's nervous reserve, which gets bigger laughs in fewer tries.

Ed Begley, Jr. gives a fantastic supporting performance as a hotel manager. Begley plays his role straight, which, as is the case in a lobby scene with Levy and O'Hara, is often as vital as whooping it up. Another role that was probably intended to be supporting — Fred Willard as a baseball-euphemism-spouting, Sherlock Holmes-loving television announcer — turns into a major role. No doubt Willard's spot-on improvisation was too tasty to leave any scraps on the cutting room floor.

Oddly, Guest's own character seems too heavily edited. Of the five dog owners, his character shines at points, but then seems to disappear, only to re-emerge as a slightly different persona. Still, you know that in the hands of Guest and friends that you're guaranteed big laughs continuously. Currently, only the Farelly Brothers even approach that watermark.

— Aaron Tassano (aaronaroundthecorner@yahoo.com)