Between the Criterion Collection’s welcome 4K upgrade of This Is Spinal Tap (a film the company first put out on laserdisc and a decades-long out-of-print DVD) and the theatrical release of its belated sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, September has already been a big month for improvised comedies. This is also the 25th anniversary of Christopher Guest’s Best in Show, which stands as the peak of the form as it was being practiced around the turn of the millennium.
Building on his initial effort, 1996’s Waiting for Guffman, and carrying over most of its core cast, Guest supplemented their ranks with new faces, expanding the repertory company he would continue to work with in the years to come. He also broadened the scope of the story, upping the stakes from the travails of a small-town community theater troupe to a fiercely competitive dog show that attracts as many eccentric characters as pedigreed pooches.
By the time Guest embarked on Best in Show, he had honed his faux-doc methods (interviews, handheld camerawork, the “six month later” catch-ups), and along with key collaborator Eugene Levy, devised the basic plot and personality quirks of those converging on Philadelphia for the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show. Mirroring real documentaries that follow multiple protagonists from different walks of life, Guest and Levy introduce theirs in turn – and on their home turf. On the lower end of the economic scale are Gerry and Cookie Fleck (Levy and Catherine O’Hara), who have to schlep all the way from Florida with their Norwich terrier, Winky. Wherever they go, though, Cookie’s sexpot past seems to follow, much to Gerry’s visible discomfort. Somewhat better-off is Guest’s pedantic loner Harlan Pepper, who dotes on his bloodhound, Hubert, and similarly has to road trip it from North Carolina, giving him ample opportunity to practice his new hobby, ventriloquism.
On the other end of the spectrum are Tribeca residents Scott Donlan and Stefan Vanderhoof (John Michael Higgins and Guest’s Tap bandmate Michael McKean), a gay couple with matching Shih Tzus, but the super-flamboyant Scott’s Agnes is the one in the competition. The bluest blood of the bunch belongs to the positively ancient Leslie Ward Cabot (Patrick Cranshaw), whose trophy wife Sherri Ann (Jennifer Coolidge) leaves the handling of their two-time champion Standard Poodle, Rhapsody in White, to professional Christy Cummings (Jane Lynch). That leaves Illinois yuppies Hamilton and Meg Swan (Michael Hitchcock and Parker Posey), who are stressed out about how their sex life has negatively affected their high-strung Weimaraner, Beatrice – and vice versa. (Naturally, their therapy sessions bookend the film.)
Also in the mix are Bob Balaban and Don Lake (Guffman vets, both) as the Mayflower Kennel Club’s president and chairman, respectively, and Ed Begley Jr. (returning to the fold for the first time since Spinal Tap, in which he played the band’s first ill-fated drummer) as the manager of the hotel where the contestants and their demanding owners stay. Guest holds his secret weapon in reserve until the film’s midpoint, though, when the show gets underway and frequently off-color commentator Buck Laughlin (Fred Willard) is deployed. Raising blithering ignorance to the level of high art, Buck’s loopy interjections seem designed to test the patience of his colleague Trevor Beckwith, but Willard’s scene partner Jim Piddock proves remarkably unflappable in the face of his stream-of-consciousness ramblings.
As in his other improvised films, Guest allows the comedy to grow out of the accumulation of detail and the push-pull between his characters, who are frequently at cross-purposes. He and Levy are also diligent about setting things up that will pay off later, like the utility closet Begley’s hotel manager shows off, which he later puts the Flecks in when their credit card (“the good one”) is declined. Even more dramatic is the saga of Beatrice’s toy Busy Bee, which Guest makes sure the viewer sees twice before it goes missing, resulting in the Swans’ backstage meltdown, which has serious repercussions during the competition.
No matter how absurd things get – one of Gerry’s character quirks, after all, is he literally has two left feet – Guest and Levy invest the final round of judging with the gravitas it merits, injecting genuine suspense into the moment right before “Best in Show” is declared. Having established a winning formula for themselves, the choice to get the band back together for a third go-around was pretty much a no-brainer. Appropriately, 2003’s A Mighty Wind took the form of a documentary about the preparations for a tribute concert and the reunion of one of its estranged acts – prefiguring Spinal Tap II by a couple decades. It also continued the trend of giving Guest larger and larger ensembles of actors to corral. Just no four-legged ones.
“Best in Show” is streaming on Kanopy and is available for rent or purchase.
