Review of A Mighty Wind (2003) by Paul N — 03 Aug 2008

As the only American male over the age of 8 *not* to have yet seen Spinal Tap, I know my thoughts on this movie are worth the equivalent of week-old Spam. However, I plunge ahead.

I enjoyed this movie as a whole. It had a compelling storyline that could have been made more of. It had interesting and intriguing characters involved in complex relationships that could have been made more of. And it revolved around a style of music that I grew up with (albeit somewhat belatedly), and that was enjoyable even in it's farcicality.

No, farcicality is not a real word. Now please focus.

There are underlying tensions throughout this film that are beautiful but never fully utilized. What of the rivalry between the sell-out New Main Street Singers and the Folksmen and Mitch and Mikki? What of the romantic tensions between Mitch and Mikki? What of the strained familial relationships of the Steinbloom children? So much ripe material that is never really made good use of.

Part of this is the nature of a documentary, which allows brief and sometimes unintentioned glimpses into aspects of people's lives, but must remain focused on the topic at hand, no matter how compelling those glimpses might be. But a great documentary knows how to provide some sort of closure to those glimpses without losing focus on the topic at hand, and this movie didn't really do that.

The climactic concert was actually somewhat anti-climactic. Tensions and tempers flare and yet there is no resolution. Performances are deep and meaningful but also brief and isolated. Not all of the acts have equal time on stage, and this isn't explained or explored. I felt disappointed at the end of this scene, rather than satisfied.

And frankly, the last few minutes of the film seemed to pander comedically. Levy and Guest are brilliant writers, and after a sometimes touching and sometimes humorous (even hilarious at times) film, they seem to want to cram in the yuks at the end. The resolution of tensions between Mitch and Mikki is not convincing, leaving one to wonder if Mitch has been faking everything the whole time, caught up in the "theatricality" of the entire documentary, rather than just the culminating performance.

There are a plethora of cameo or quasi-cameo appearances in the film. Fred willard is hilarious as the former actor turned agent and manager. The singing is genuinely good - I'd like to find out if all of the characters did their own singing or not. If so, it was very impressive!

When I finally do see Spinal Tap, I hope that it can live up to the hype it has generated. "A Mighty Wind" was a good movie that could have been much, much better. But it remains a good movie, all the same.