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 • About the ratings • Write your own review • Back to main page ![[]](http://img.coxnewsweb.com/B/06/93/06/image_6936.gif){kind=small} The answer, my friend, is in 'A Mighty Wind'
By John DeFore Special to the American-Statesman Posted: May 9, 2003 Christopher Guest, director of such brutally funny films as "Waiting For Guffman" and "Best In Show," hates the word "mockumentary" -- presumably because, while acknowledging that his nonfiction-style films are actually fictional, it also suggests that the director exploits his creations for laughs. With due respect to Guest, that's exactly what he does best. The dog trainers of "Show" and wannabe thespians in "Guffman" are ludicrous, if lovable, characters, and any questions about the filmmaker's attitude toward them are answered in the codas in each film, where men and women we've become fond of invariably meet with humiliating fates. "A Mighty Wind," Guest's new film about a reunion of folk musicians (co-scripted by Eugene Levy), may be the one to convince viewers of the director's sympathy for his characters: There's a moment, very late in the movie, at which a running joke turns into something truly heartfelt; two has-beens become a man and a woman connecting with a moment of genuine emotion that's decades old. As distasteful as it is to say, Guest's fondness for this assemblage of idealists and airheads dilutes the bite of his earlier films, where audiences came to like characters of their own accord and may have resented the filmmaker for his treatment of them, even while they laughed themselves silly. That's not to say there aren't laughs here -- "Wind" is funnier than any movie so far this year, with the possible exception of "The Life Of David Gale" -- but it doesn't match the steady guffawing stream of its two predecessors. There may be twice as many good jokes here as a first viewing reveals, because "Wind" is not especially good about inserting breaks in the dialogue to allow for the laughter to die down, but that's the kind of thing viewers can remedy with DVD, where "Wind" may well become for baby boomers what Guest's "Spinal Tap" was for reformed headbangers. The film's plot is simple, and even timely given the recent passing of music industry legends like Alan Lomax (not that Lomax's brand of folk was anything like "Wind's"): Irving Steinbloom, a fictional pioneer of the '60s' boom in commercialized folk music, has died, and his children (none of whom has much feel for the genre) have arranged a tribute concert featuring three of his most popular groups. There are the New Main Street Singers, a nine-member group with matching sweaters and cultlike smiles; The Folksmen, a Kingston Trio-type group who think themselves more authentic than their peers; and Mitch & Mickey, sweethearts of the folk scene who once were a couple but have long been estranged. Mitch (Levy) went a little nuts after his split from Mickey, and now speaks in the halting, uncertain cadences of a drug casualty; Levy is too right in the role, making his caricature weirdly lifelike and almost painful to watch. Other actors stick closer to Guest's old formula: John Michael Higgins and Jane Lynch, as New Main Street Singers leaders Terry and Laurie Bohner (mildly risqué names and lyrics fill the film) paint modern folkies as quasi-mystical lunatics; they've invented their own religion in which color (pink, mainly) is the universe's supreme power. Jennifer Coolidge, meanwhile, goes out on a limb as a publicist of uncertain ethnicity and microscopic brainpower; she's not on screen much, but she gets the film's best zinger. Like Coolidge, most of the actors suffer from too little screen time. The Guest/Levy company has an embarrassment of riches, too many funny people to cram into any one movie, and viewers are slightly worse off thanks to the filmmakers' unwillingness to pare things down. In a cast this dense with talent, scene-stealing becomes an act not of aggression but of survival; if you've got 20 seconds before the camera moves to someone else, you'd better make it count. This is only good inasmuch as it encourages the cast to emphasize skewed personalities over the inside references that might've made "Wind" a satire for reformed folkies only. As it is, the film makes as much sense to a general audience as "Show" did to nondog lovers. The truth is, as ridiculous as the music sounds (and this brand of folk was always a joke to hipsters), the songs the cast members have written are so spot-on and sincere you might actually feel a pang of nostalgia for the justifiably dead genre. If that's not proof that Christopher Guest doesn't mean to mock his subjects, nothing is. | ||||||
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