Best In Show

Another one I saw when visiting my dad.  I wasn't drawn by the previews but I had heard good things about this movie after it came out.  I ended up staying up late to listen to the commentary track, which had some interesting tidbits.

Shot mostly in a faux documentary style.  It turns out that Eugene Levy doesn't write dialogue for his scripts.  He just writes down major plot points for each scene.  So the movie was almost entirely improv.  I didn't realize it, but many of the same people were in Spinal Tap, and the style felt very similar.  They said that as they refine each scene they think they end up using just about the same number of takes as a movie with a script.  It seemed to work pretty well.

I think they did manage to capture caricatures of some of the people who enter dogs into shows.  They were pretty over-the-top characters.  A total nerd married to a former slut.  Parker Posey played a really intense up-tight yuppie.  A couple of huge fags.  One big-time hick.  And of course, Fred Willard played a complete idiot.

They said that for Willard they just brought him in for a day and a half and let him go.  The "expert" who played his straight man was actually an actor who did a very good job holding his own.

Now that I think about it, there really wasn't all that much plot to the movie.   Since they had so many stories going on they didn't have to get very deep into any of them.  I guess the faux documentary style also lends to that.

A very silly movie, in a good way.  On my brother's Total Movie Value Scale, Rental with Dinner.

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