This was Christopher Guest's first self-directed mockumentary, and it feels like it.
The small town of Blaine, Missouri has few and strange claims to fame— they were settled when their guide mistook it for California, William McKinley accepted a footstool from there and made them the "stool capital of the world" and they were the site of the first alien visit in the U.S. Dubious New York director Corky St. Clair and a cast of ill-talented amateurs are putting on a musical as part of a sesquicentennial celebration, and get excited when they hear that critic Mort Guffman is coming to watch.
This is regrettably my least favorite of Guest's mockumentaries, but it makes sense that it's his first because of it. I don't find any of the characters to be particularly funny or very defined. The film has good improv in terms of individual jokes, but not really in terms of characterization. The most defined character is Guest's role of Corky, who's essentially just a Camp Gay stereotype who ends up miscast when filling in for the role of the hot guy he put in the show for shallow reasons. The role being defined doesn't make it that funny, though, and the flamboyant character in Best in Show was much funnier and more likable. The characters in pretty much every other Guest mockumentary feel more fleshed out and distinct beyond the weird things they spout through improv, so I can't help but wonder if the script was looser in this film and Guest decided to add a little more structure in the later ones— if so, that was an improvement. The film establishes the formula of mocking a niche community and building up to showing whatever form of theatre they work to produce, with this one being literally about theatre, but I'm inclined to call it too mean here. I may not care for the characters, but mocking earnest people for having no talent feels pretty cruel.
I guess what I'm saying is go watch For Your Consideration instead. That Guest film has the exact same premise of "actors making a terrible production while getting caught up in their hype", but does it much better. The characters in that film aren't in as humble a position, their hype is established from the beginning as being unfounded, and thus their letdown feels simultaneously more right and more genuinely sad, and the characters have more structure on top of it. This film had the seeds that FYC later bloomed.
Film A foundation for better.
This was Christopher Guest's first self-directed mockumentary, and it feels like it.
The small town of Blaine, Missouri has few and strange claims to fame— they were settled when their guide mistook it for California, William McKinley accepted a footstool from there and made them the "stool capital of the world" and they were the site of the first alien visit in the U.S. Dubious New York director Corky St. Clair and a cast of ill-talented amateurs are putting on a musical as part of a sesquicentennial celebration, and get excited when they hear that critic Mort Guffman is coming to watch.
This is regrettably my least favorite of Guest's mockumentaries, but it makes sense that it's his first because of it. I don't find any of the characters to be particularly funny or very defined. The film has good improv in terms of individual jokes, but not really in terms of characterization. The most defined character is Guest's role of Corky, who's essentially just a Camp Gay stereotype who ends up miscast when filling in for the role of the hot guy he put in the show for shallow reasons. The role being defined doesn't make it that funny, though, and the flamboyant character in Best in Show was much funnier and more likable. The characters in pretty much every other Guest mockumentary feel more fleshed out and distinct beyond the weird things they spout through improv, so I can't help but wonder if the script was looser in this film and Guest decided to add a little more structure in the later ones— if so, that was an improvement. The film establishes the formula of mocking a niche community and building up to showing whatever form of theatre they work to produce, with this one being literally about theatre, but I'm inclined to call it too mean here. I may not care for the characters, but mocking earnest people for having no talent feels pretty cruel.
I guess what I'm saying is go watch For Your Consideration instead. That Guest film has the exact same premise of "actors making a terrible production while getting caught up in their hype", but does it much better. The characters in that film aren't in as humble a position, their hype is established from the beginning as being unfounded, and thus their letdown feels simultaneously more right and more genuinely sad, and the characters have more structure on top of it. This film had the seeds that FYC later bloomed.