Best in Show film review

certificate_12

BEST IN SHOW

Christopher Guest waited 13 years before recreating the mockumentary style he helped develop so brilliantly with This is Spinal Tap. His 1996 film Waiting for Guffman was a sublime but overlooked parody of a small town dramatics company, but his new film as director and star is both highly accessible and wickedly funny.

The world of the dog show is a topic little exploited by mainstream moviemakers, but proves fertile territory for a director whose tongue is firmly in his cheek. In a completely reverential and true to life style, the film charts five oddball American dogfanciers whose utter determination to capture the highly coveted first prize for their canine's prowess at the Mayflower Dog Show far outweighs any compassion for their fellow human competitors. These are seriously obsessed people: when they tell us their hopes and dreams for their pets in the film's opening sequences we realise we are in the land of the more than slightly crazed. It also allows for some brilliantly drawn characters portrayed by a superb ensemble cast: Gerry Fleck (Eugene Levy) is a terrier owner has two left feet (literally) and a wife who appears to have slept with every man in America, Harlan Pepper (Guest) is what Nigel Tufnel's long lost brother might have been like, a country hick with a passion firstly for his bloodhound and secondly for his ventriloquist's dummy, and Meg Swan (Parker Posey) is a braced and deranged obsessive who worries about the traumatic effect her sex life may have on her greyhound. The list goes on, but needless to say each member of the cast adds to a wonderfully cooky array of characters.

The film really takes off when the competitors arrive in Philadelphia for the big showdown. Tempers are frayed, rooms are doublebooked in the hotel and the show itself brings out the worst in everyone. Guest's skill is to keep the viewer engaged and even rooting for some of the contestants throughout the finale, which itself is greatly enlivened by a mostly inappropriate voiceover by an out-of-his-depth football commentator (Fred Willard). Constantly amusing, this film puts the director at the top of the tree of this little-worked but highly effective genre.