Waiting for Guffman

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🎙️ EPISODE 285: 07.20.2020 *Review starts @ ~ 13:35 With the passing of Fred Willard recently, I decided to rewatch Waiting for Guffman. This then led to my decision to give the entire Christopher Guest filmography a watch and/or rewatch, as well. The results have been... mixed, as I wasn't prepared for the non-mockumentary output. In my brain, he only made movies in the mold of This is Spinal Tap (which he only co-wrote and didn't direct). And that just isn't the case (see here and here). It had been years since I've seen Guffman, and–while I knew I would enjoy it–I wasn't sure how high on the echelon it was going to rank. Ultimately I feel like it's a solid 9 and not a classic or near-classic. It left me wanting more but not necessarily in a good way.

Obviously, this level of nitpicking is pretty dumb and, don't get me wrong, I love this movie. Guffman features Guest himself center-stage in perhaps his most iconic role, eccentric small town theater director Corky St. Clair. Rounding out the featured cast are Guest regulars doing some of their best characters: Eugene Levy, an unhip dentist determined to discover his inner artist; Parker Posey, a backwoods and tragic Dairy Queen employee; Bob Balaban, the show's increasingly frustrated musical director; and Willard and Catherine O'Hara as a pair of married travel agents with loads of tension beneath their bubbly facade who are St. Clair's standby amateur performers.

The original music and songs featured in the musical inside the film, "Red, White and Blaine," to celebrate the fictional small town of Blaine, Missouri's 150th anniversary were penned by Spinal Tap trio Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, and they're fantastic. In some ways, it feels like we don't get to spend enough time with them (like we do in A Mighty Wind, for instance). At an 84-minute runtime, another 15-20 would have been more than welcome, in my opinion; not just for the great music, but to round-out these tremendous characters and the story arcs. Nitpicking, I know.

Still, Waiting for Guffman remains one of the best comedies of the 90s and along with Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, among the best mockumentary films ever made.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 285A - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 286 ⫸

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