When I watched Waiting for Guffman, writer/director/performer Christopher Guest’s mockumentary about a small town pageant and the people convinced it was bigger than it really was, I at least had some experience in college working in theater. Plus, my podcast partner (at some point, there will be another) Jen has done a heck of a lot more small theatrical shows since college, so it made sense to do an episode of the show on that movie. However, Guest followed up that work with another mockumentary, this one focused on dog shows called Best in Show. I’ve never really seen or been to or part of a dog show. Most people know I have a cat these days.
But gosh golly gee whiz, I grew up with dogs and would probably have one if my living conditions were different. Dogs are great. So, let’s see the movie that is no doubt about people who maybe don’t quite love dogs the same way I do.
As with Guffman, Best in Show is another ensemble piece, with many of Guffman‘s cast returning, showing more eccentrics, many with undeservedly high opinions of themselves and the importance of what they do, as they converse at a Philadelphia-area dog show with their respective dogs. There’s the flamboyant gay couple (Michael McKean and John Michael Higgins), the yuppie couple who are the closest the movie has to villains (Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock), a deeply-in debt middle class married couple (co-writer Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara), a trophy wife and the dog trainer she seems suspiciously close to (Jennifer Coolidge and Jane Lynch), and a small town Southern (Guest) whose friends don’t seem to get that he won’t be getting much fishing in at the dog show. Each of these folks has their own quirks and run into their own problems en route to and during the dog show, and that’s when Guest’s fake documentary doesn’t turn its camera on the equally self-important folks running the show.
That said, I wouldn’t say any of these people, no matter how much I call them “self-important,” are necessarily bad people. They just care a whole lot more about the outcome of a dog show than most people would. Coolidge and Lynch, for example, are basically coming back after winning in previous years, and the joke is how the movie only gradually revealed Coolidge is less interested in her elderly husband–a man who she says she can not talk to forever like that’s a good thing–than she is in her poodle’s trainer. The yuppies spend a lot of time yelling at each other and other people for upsetting their dog, suggesting the stress of it all is not worth the trip. Guest’s Harlan seems more interested in becoming a ventriloquist at times. And Levy’s nebbish Gerry can’t seem to avoid seeing his wife Cookie run into very affectionate old boyfriends who never forgot the tricks she used to pull, so to speak.
This is the sort of movie I have a hard time writing up. It’s funny, and even if you’ve never been to a dog show, you can probably imagine that this is what one is like. I would think most people would think of their dogs as just faithful companions to hang around and take care of, animals who are a lot like children that never quite grow up. The idea of taking a purebred anything to be prodded and judged on minutia that probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to anyone outside of that world, but at the same time, still seems utterly believable. Most people may not take their pets to animal shows, but a simple stroll through social media shows how much people will do with their pets that, well, maybe they didn’t do 100 years or so ago. I mean, I know I have a lot of photos of my own overweight feline friend on Facebook…
As such, a movie like this is a low-key, gentle ribbing of some people who may not be in on the joke, but they don’t seem the type to be all that embarrassed anyway. If anything, this one might have been a bit more ambitious since so many of the characters have so few scenes together, coming as they are from different parts of the country, until they all arrive at the dog show. Then again, these are the sorts of characters who are basically resilient enough to basically move beyond set-backs and end up perhaps about where they started, but not too concerned about it in the grand scheme of things. Quite frankly, it’s just fun to watch folks try, be a bit funny, mostly fail, and then keep right on going. That sounds almost like life itself.
Grade: A-
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