Yesterday’s movie: Best in Show

Christopher Guest has been making us laugh for around 25 years now, even if you don’t recognize his name or face. He wrote, directed, and co-stars in Best In Show, a pseudo-documentary about the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show and some of its participants. Guest is best-known for the 1996 film Waiting for Guffman, in which he also wrote, directed, and co-starred, for playing bassist Nigel Tufnel in the hilarious This is Spinal Tap, and writing and performing on Saturday Night Live.

Best in Show has a lot of similarities to Spinal Tap, which he co-wrote, in that there isn’t a plot per se (just like most lives lack a nice, tidy, Hollywood-esque plot), and instead finds humor in the quirkiness of its characters and situations. For example, one of the funniest running gags is that husband and wife (co-writer and Second City TV alumnus) Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara (also an SCTV alum) make the trip up to the show from Florida with their terrier, discovering along the way that every man they meet is one of O’Hara’s former lovers.