Review of Best in Show (2000) by Nathan F — 20 Mar 2009

Best in Show is much funnier and much smarter than Christopher Guest's debut Waiting for Guffman, which I thought relied much too heavily on small-town stupidity; here, his new characters (but same cast) are extremely well-acted and varying enough to provide plenty of hysterics--the only leftover from his stupid-ha-ha phase is Jennifer Coolidge as Anne Nicole Smith (or something like her) and is, likewise, the most excisable character.

The highlights though are ample, including Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock as yipping yuppies who spend their time balancing conniptions in an attempt to keep their Weimaraner under control (amusingly, the dog never seems to show any interest at all in the lynchpin 'busy bee'), Michael McKean and John Michael Higgins as flamingly gay Shih Tzu owners with a knack for naughty puns, and Fred Willard as the news commentator channeling Airplane!'s Captain Oveur and speaking in nonsensical jibberish.

What I like about Best in Show is its presentation of classical 'stupidity,' which was played in Waiting for Guffman as a faulty kind of schadenfreude, is now represented as divisions in personal esoterica--Christopher Guest's Harlon Pepper is a lower-class fishing store owner, but his obsession with naming every type of nut serves as an excellent antithesis to Posey and Hitchcock's obsession with identifying all the items in an L.

L. Bean catalogue. Here the separation between idiocy and superiority is not as blatant as it was in Guffman; instead Guest seems to suggest that intelligence may just mean having a more expensive obsession--a class statement he harmonizes by bringing all of his contestants together in their love for dogs.

It's notable that even the small-town yokels that he formerly poked fun at for being second-tier are finally given justice: Harlon Pepper's southern bloodhound places just as well as Jane Lynch and Jennifer Coolidge's well-groomed, former champion poodle.

By relaxing his condescending bite, Guest has made a comedy that cares for its characters and reduces our class differences (that were the entire basis for Guffman) to issues of minutia. It's a strong step in the right direction.