Susan Granger’s review of “BEST IN SHOW” (Warner Bros./Castle Rock Entertainment)
There’s something about dog shows that’s terribly amusing. I know those who show off their purebreds take them very, very seriously, but for onlookers, like Christopher Guest, the possibilities for comedy are endless. In fact, sanity goes to the dogs where Best of Breed trophies are concerned. This wacky mockumentary, a worthy successor to “Waiting for Guffman,” centers on Philadelphia’s annual Mayflower Dog Show, similar to New York’s Westminster Dog Show. Diverse contenders include, from Illinois, a bickering, neurotic yuppie couple (Parker Posey, Michael Hitchcock) with Beatrice, their depressed Weimaraner; from Florida, a milquetoast menswear salesman (Eugene Levy) with, literally, two left feet and bubbly, his promiscuous wife (Catherine O’Hara), showing Winky, their Norwich Terrier; from North Carolina, a fly-fishing shop owner (Christopher Guest) with his beloved Bloodhound Hubert; from New York, a flamboyantly gay couple (John Michael Higgins, Michael McKean) with Miss Agnes, one of their Shih Tzus; and from the Main Line, a trashy trophy wife (Jennifer Coolidge) and her hired handler (Jane Lynch) with their two-time champion Standard Poodle, Rhapsody in White. Plus there’s the show’s President (Bob Balaban), chairman (Don Lake), and mis-matched commentators (Jim Piddock, Fred Willard), along with a long-suffering hotel manager (Ed Begley Jr.) Guest and his co-scripter Eugene Levy obviously encouraged their ensemble cast into improvisational riffs that are executed with somewhat predictable but barkingly loony, fast-paced finesse, particularly the one-liners and non-sequiturs. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Best in Show” is a dementedly funny 9. It’s a hilarious howl – a walloping woof!
