10 Greatest Mockumentary Films Of All Time
4. Best In Show
Christopher Guest is the once and future king of the mockumentary world. From small town America to glam rock to dog breeding shows, Guest can find a part of the world ripe for mocking and documenting. Because at the end of the day, dog shows such as Crufts are inherently ridiculous, surprisingly unnatural and not really about the dogs. It’s pretty much a perfect topic for parody.
Starring many of Guest’s prominent feature players from high strung yuppies Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock to Fred Willard’s believable Cotton McKnight, musing how he’d like to see some of the dogs in a ‘Sherlock Holmes hat and pipe outfit’ alongside Eugene Levy’s character who was born with two left feet. Literally. A typical Guest set up and punchline if ever there was one.
Best in Show is littered with little unpolished nuggets of comedy like this or how Posey and Hitchcock’s characters first saw one another in Starbucks stores that were opposite one another or the Anna Nicole Smith caricature played by Jennifer Coolidge claiming that her and her elderly husband do in fact share a lot of similarities, ‘We both like soup’.
Like all good mockumentaries Best in Show is built on talented improv players whose stories all intertwine like a cat’s cradle into one grand furry finale; it’s beautiful chaos.