Best in Show 2000
Showing at only 5 theaters in Atlanta right now, Best in Show is still getting a lot of attention from the media because it is a sort of follow-up to This is Spinal Tap. Both are “mockumentaries” given the look and feel of documentaries, but fictional nonetheless. With Spinal Tap it was an aging heavy metal band, in this one it is the very eccentric people that enter competitive dog shows. Both movies starred Christopher Guest and Michael McKean.
Spinal Tap was the better movie, dealing with a more familiar area and also concentrating on a smaller group of people. Best in Show follows five groups of people as they compete for best of breed and best in show honors. Some of the people are just plain annoying but most are not people you would ever want to know in real life (the only exception being the dark horse bloodhound owner from the south, played well by the director and co-writer Christopher Guest). A movie needs to like at least some of its characters (even flawed characters) if it really wants to engage the audience (Almost Famous did this as well as any movie I’ve seen recently).
But these oddball characters don’t make a movie by themselves. There needed to be more interaction between the different players, rather than just a group of isolated character studies. There are still a lot of funny moments and on-going jokes. But too often they go for the easy laugh rather than building up more complex elements that would have made this a better film. A lot of this probably has to do with how the movie was made: the characters were written along with a backbone plot but then the actors mostly just ad-libbed their way through their scenes. It was probably a lot of fun to make and the cast really does have quite a bit of talent, but a better director would probably have left out a lot of what we see.
So while it was funny and cute with some good and maybe even great moments, there are just as many times where the movie misses its mark. Still, though, a lot of parts of it are quite enjoyable and if you move past the misfires, it is fun to watch. People who like Whose Line Is It Anyway will probably love this.
Not the best in show, I’ll give it a B-.
Written: 04 Nov 2000