Truly Dreadful Film

Really Surprised!

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Waiting for Guffman, the ensemble-driven mock-u-parody of community theater, differs in one engaging way from writer-director-star Christopher Guest's other inspections of American culture at its most banal. Principally, Guffman follows a group of people who (think they) are on life's upslope, building toward a great achievement of teamwork in showbiz. Guest's other movies with the same cast--viz. Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration--are far more concerned with portraying the pathos of the has-been. In Guffman, Guest's character, Corky, is the only has-been, and then only if you count '10 years living in New York and failing auditions' as achieving something in show business. Guffman's characters are small town people at their most stereotypical ordinary selves, people yearning for a brush with the magic of being a part of a really good play. Consider Parker Posey's performance as Libby Mae Brown, the Dairy Queen worker. Posey tells you everything you need to know about the listless ennui of being stuck in a place with nothing to do and no way to grow with a couple of wordless moments where she looks away, her eyes reverberating what is not being said about the failure of dreams. Or take Bob Balaban's portrayal of the quietly suffering music teacher, deposed as the director of the town's annual play in favor of the terrible infant that is Corky (who has lived in New York, after all). The scene where Balaban's character reacts to Corky's reappearance at the helm of the production is a master class in comedic character acting in the most tissue-subtle way that it can be delivered.The thing about the failure of never-weres (as opposed to has-beens) is that the failure brings no sanction, no shame. Americans are raised on tales of "The Little Engine That Could" and Abe Lincoln's failed political campaigns before he became the greatest President in history. In America, if you aren't yet anything, and you try, we root for you. If you fail and try again, we find ourselves rooting twice as hard. This striving of small town nobodys towards the stardust of Broadway, home of another Abe, Abe Guffman, gives this film an emotional resonance fundamentally different from Guest's many other projects (even Spinal Tap). The result is that by the end of the film, we're not at all tired of the characters, or annoyed or sapped by their failure to get discovered. Guest could assemble a new script and make the sequel, could make a "Guffman 2," and it would succeed with both his core audience and with a general audience, because everybody (in America, anyway) loves to see a first-timer try to make it big, whether it is their first attempt, or their tenth.

Writer-director Christopher Guest's timing and peculiar sense of humor are purposefully erratic--and it takes some time for him to get an audience off the dime and into the perplexing spirit of his cinematic occasions. Guest is well-attuned to the colorful eccentricities of 'ordinary' folks, yet his knowing nature borders on smirking, and I'm not a big fan of obnoxiousness--no matter how talented the participants. Mockumentary about a small town acting troupe putting on a musical production does benefit from some great players (particularly Fred Willard, Eugene Levy, and the effortlessly funny Catherine O'Hara). However Guest, himself a co-star--giving a rather offensive performance as gay theater director Corky--does not have the pizazz to bring off scenes of uncomfortable ineptitude. One waits in queasy vain for a pay-off that never comes. I assume Guest wants to have some comedic punch within these improvisational set-ups; if so, he's punching with two limp wrists, and his film is awfully long even at 84 minutes. *1/2 from ****

Waiting for Guffman is a mockumentary about a small town putting on a production in hopes of making it to Broadway. This new acting trope is led by rather eccentric Corky St. Clair(Christopher Guest), and consists of two travel agents(who have never left town), A Dairy Queen employee, a rather geeky dentist with a lazy eye, and so much more. The movie follows these cast of players with the support of the town, as they put on a production called, "Red, White, and Blaine"(Blaine being the town they live in).What is best about this movie is that the only scripted scenes were that of the actual play. Everything else is completely ad-libbed which makes this movie genuine and just downright funny. Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, in my opinion, are purely brilliant. The plot works, the characters are so offbeat and hysterical that I can still recall almost every single line they said.All in all, Waiting for Guffman is perhaps one of, if not the, funniest movie I have ever seen. 9/10.

The current climate of cinematic comedy is comparable, to an extent, to the trend in horror: everything is geared toward pull-out-all-stops excess that is more disgusting than entertaining. We should thank our lucky stars for Christopher Guest, a consistently surprising filmmaker (he directed "Best in Show" and wrote "This is Spinal Tap") who makes 'mockumentaries' that play like actual documentaries. "Waiting for Guffman" follows Corky St. Clair (Guest), a flamboyant stage director who gathers a group of 'eclectic' locals (a cross-eyed dentist; a husband-and-wife travel agent team; a Dairy Queen employee) for a production about the sleepy town in which they live (its claim to fame being home of the footstool). There is a hilarious authenticity to the behind-the-scenes footage, but the film never laughs at its subjects--as viewers, we share Corky's (admittedly delusional) passion with bittersweet good humor. The supporting cast--consisting of Guest regulars Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Parker Posey, Fred Willard, Bob Balaban, and Larry Miller--is in top form here. "Waiting for Guffman" is a quiet comedy gem about a dull, quiet town. And it's also ridiculously rated "R" for two quick instances of F-word usage (way to call it, MPAA!).