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Not being a connoisseur of dog shows, I can only make vague stabs at the satirical targets in Christopher Guest’s Best in Show (2000), starring Guest (writer/director), Eugene Levy (writer) and Michael McKean. This surprisingly funny mockudrama about dedicated dog owners trotting themselves out for display just as much as their beloved dogs was not something I expected to enjoy, but I should have known better, being that Guest and McKean both created This Is Spinal Tap. Here, rather than the eclectic heavy metal industry, we have a film with an ostensible target (dog lovers who take their hobby way too seriously) and, less obviously, other aficionados across the board: sports nuts, bibliophiles, Simpsons-episode-spouters and just about all Type-A personalities with a hobby that draws a crowd. While the cast represents a wide slice of the pie of American culture, the fundamental jest is that we all take ourselves too seriously at times, and dog-lovers perhaps make a more obvious display of this than others.
The film spreads itself over several families preparing to enter the Mayflower Dog Show, a national dog show drawing a crowd which, if typical of the dog-showing crowd, will not prompt me to reserve a seat any time soon. A pair of lesbians (Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch) from Pennsylvania bring a poodle resembling a lawn flamingo more than an actual dog, along with a peculiar mix of female liberalism and housewife-ish laissez-faire. A perfectly yuppified couple from Moordale, Illinois (Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock) heap their sexual and societal aggressions on the world (and their dog) when they fail to locate their dog’s favorite squeeze toy, and a befuddled Fleck couple from Florida (Levy and Catherine O'Hara) resorts to staying in a hotel utility closet when their credit card gets denied. Meanwhile, a hysterically funny gay couple from New York City (McKean and John Michael Higgins) and a North Dakota redneck (Guest) aspiring towards ventriloquism add just the right touch of surrealism to the whole mix...as if surrealism were needed when treating with the likes of people who measure their success by the size of their dog’s dick.
The funny part is, you can’t help but feel a certain sense of the spectator as you watch these enthusiasts trot their wares. In theory, this is a hobby that requires a certain amount of work, but you wouldn’t know it from this movie. We see the contenders pack, say their good-byes to friends and family, travel, set up at the hotel, and walk their dogs around a stadium two or three times while some three-chinned judge stands by and pulls four top choices from a "gut instinct." All actors and actresses do a great job of presenting the many and various contretemps of the dog-lovers’ crowd, but Eugene Levy and (Donolan) stand out in particular: Levy is the perfect middle-aged geek (reminiscent of his role as Jim's dad in the American Pie saga) turning a half-blind eye towards his wife’s promiscuous history as he attempts to prepare his dog for the grueling task of walking and sitting down for the competition. Higgins, paired along Michael McKean, is saucy and witty, and it was more he himself than his dog I found myself cheering on. (Far be it for me to give away the winner, of course--that would rob any potential viewer from about two drops of suspense sweat.)
If viewed with a dog-lover’s ardor, a viewer will ultimately be depressed. There are a few left-field hairdos on some Shih Tzus, and Guest elicits innumerable few reluctant grins at his tomfoolery ventriloquism on his dog (I still can't believe this is the same Guest from This Is Spinal Tap), but for the most part, we’re laughing at the dog owners, wondering what exactly warped their priorities in life to bring them to such a desperate pitch that their success and failure hinges on a four-legged mutt, no matter how well-bred the mutt is. It’s only a shame we can’t judge all actors with a similar criteria.
-Long
Copyright 2002 Tso Long Productions ©