Best in Show (2000)

Director: Christopher Guest

Cast: Jennifer Coolidge, Christopher Guest, John Michael Higgins, Michael Hitchcock

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Are the films of Christopher Guest “ha-ha” funny (a joke delivery system), or “oh no” funny (designed to make one feel uncomfortable to the point where laughter is the only response remaining)? I’m tempted to say the latter, and that’s not a criticism. “Ha-ha” funny can fade once you know where the punchlines are. Even if your memory fades and you revist the film after some years, the memory never fully goes away. “Oh no” funny may turn some people off*, but when you re-visit a film like this after some time, the feelings of pity, contempt, and empathy that made you initially laugh all those years ago can be just as potent now.

Finding anything important almost invariably looks a little bit like madness to an outside observer, so we can look at the human contestants of the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show with a little bit of judgment, but just as the “oh no” starts to subside, the viewer who is engaging with the film will start to see themselves in the characters, even if they don’t own of show dogs.

There’s a certain modular quality to the film, and I almost start to see the seams where hours upon hours of takes pieces together to forge something resembling a narrative. That might take away from total enjoyment of the film, but I think it exemplifies just why the improv-only format is the best way to make a mockumentary with any kind of verisimilitude.

Maybe that’s actually why people keep telling me that can’t stand to watch The Office.

*There are apparently a vast army of people out there who won’t watch The Office for this same reason, and they’ve all committed to the obligation to let me know about it.

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025)

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner

Have I Seen It Before: Hmm… Tricky question. Obviously the film is brand new, so…

Let’s just get into it.

Did I Like It: I always say that the the most disappointing* thing that a documentary can be is feel like a DVD special feature. I’m not even saying that I necessarily dislike a DVD special feature. Occasionally they can be entertaining. Occasionally they can have some insight. Often, it feels a little antiseptic, so as to be so careful not to overshadow the film its built to support.

I laughed at several points in the film, but I didn’t have that vaguely, but pleasurably unsettled feeling that this is a work of deeply demented people who have honed their eccentricities into one of the most finely tuned comedies ever made. Exploring the fine line between clever and stupid, if you will.

Expecting that much from a sequel 40-plus years after the original is likely unfair, but the comparison is tricky if not impossible to avoid. The over-under on Reiner and the cast is 80, and the notion that someone can still revolutionize their form seems absurd as I type it.

And yet, this could have been something more, other than an above-average item on the special features menu of a 40th Anniversary Blu Ray**. It could have had fewer celebrity cameos. The thing is chock-a-block with them. Paul McCartney is practically a fourth member of the band, and what little third act the film has is tied to how much time they were willing to get from Elton John. It could have fewer callbacks to the first film. Yes, Stonehenge makes an appearance. They try to make it different than the last time, but it’s entirely too self-conscious to work on its own.

*Not the worst thing, mind you. We leave the worst to Leni Riefenstahl. Let’s just be clear about that.

**Yeah, I get it. It needs to be 4K. I’ll get there eventually. Just not today.

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. A small note about this screening though. I stumbled upon a factory-sealed DVD at a used dealer at the Flea Market. That’s unusual enough, but the case hailed from an era when DVDs were frequently stolen commodities (kids, ask your parents) and the case had not one, not two, but three security seals on every open end. Those things were annoying to take off in the early aughts, but the glue on these suckers had two decades to seal, and I nearly had to rent a sledgehammer to get to the chewy movie at the center.

Did I Like It: By this point, the mockumentary has been played out to death. TV shows upon TV sows have used the format, and the instant one used that milieu and wasn’t any good, the magic was probably gone.

But this is something special. It didn’t invent the wheel as far as mockumentary comedies go. For that, we’d have to (but probably shouldn’t) look at least a year earlier to Woody Allen’s Zelig (1983), or maybe even as far back as his Take The Money and Run (1969). 

Or maybe the better precursor to what we have here is A Hard Day’s Night (1964), because not only does this film tap into that precisely correct demented vein of absurdity that is the lifeblood of every great comedy, but the music also works. That’s directly tied to the unusual skills of Messrs. Guest, McKean, and Shearer. They are at the top of their game here comedically and they could have made an honest shot at being rock stars, had they possessed that ambition. Hell, look to A Mighty Wind (2003) and those three men could have made decent-bordering-on-great musicians of any genre.

As with most comedies, it’s never the most memorable lines that make the film truly great. You can talk about “this one goes to eleven” forever, but it’s the briefest pause the band takes before offering their reaction to “shit sandwich” that I think is both so insanely funny and so pathetically human.

Also, you can’t go wrong with a few dead drummers and a Stonehenge megalith. It’s easily the broadest comedy of which Guest is at the forefront, but anyone’s got a problem with that is the type of person who would let “shit sandwich” get printed in a magazine.