Best in Show (2000)

Best in Show: 2000, dir. Christopher Guest. Seen on DVD (March 23).
This movie made me laugh, even though I was watching it alone. I laughed aloud, and I giggled a lot, and I put my hand to my forehead and groaned, “ohhhh, my God, they didn’t,” and then I laughed some more.
I saw A Mighty Wind last year and I thought it was funny and cute, but Best in Show is even funnier. I mean, just in terms of plain old laughs, this is a wonderfully entertaining movie.

Like A Mighty Wind, the movie is in mock-documentary format, following a number of hopefuls in a prestigious national dog show. The dog owners are the usual quirky Guest types, played by his stock company of actors.
Eugene Levy (who also co-wrote) is the guy with two left feet whose wife, Catherine O’Hara, had quite a lurid past before marrying him. They sing cute little songs about their terrier. Guest plays a North Carolina bait-shop owner with a big slobbering bloodhound. (His accent is identical to Val Kilmer’s in Tombstone, which kept freaking me out a little.) Michael McKean and John Michael Higgins make a cute couple. And Bob Balaban. And Parker Posey. And Ed Begley Jr. And so on.
And then there is Fred Willard, who made me laugh so hard that I was practically crying. He is one of the commentators during the big dog show, who was obviously not selected for his knowledge about dogs, and nearly every word out of his mouth is hilarious.
Even the dogs are funny. The dogs are funny when they do nothing but lie there on a bed or couch. I loved the scenes where the dog’s owner would rant passionately about the dog and the competition and the desire to win, and then the camera would cut to a half-asleep dog.
I saw this movie on DVD so afterwards, I watched the deleted scenes. I can see why they didn’t fit into the finished film, but most of them were pretty amusing too. I particularly liked Harlan’s beach-ball collection. My boyfriend started watching the commentary track and claims it’s surprisingly uninteresting, considering the filmmakers and talent involved.
I don’t know if Best in Show would be just as entertaining on repeated viewings. I don’t feel like I need to see it again anytime soon. It might be a good movie to watch with an audience … and it’s going to be shown outdoors in Austin this summer as part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s “Movies in the Park” series, so maybe I’ll watch it again then and find out.