Poll Position: Best in Show (2000)

This week we toss some "mockumentaries" your way to see what would happen. By an overwhelming vote, the movie Best in Show took the blue ribbon. The movie has that documentary feel to it in that they follow the various people around in their personal lives and seem to sit them down for interviews. It's definitely not a documentary though with a cast feature such actors as Eugene Levy. I'm just going to jump right into this one, so hit the jump to see what I thought of the whole affair.


Best in Show revolves around several pairs of people, all dog breeders, who enter into the Mayflower National Dog Competition. They're all crazy and/or neurotic in some way, but they all love their dogs! The purpose of the movie seems to be just to show what kind of kooky characters you are likely to find in dog competitions, but besides that we're just sorta hanging around waiting to see who eventually wins the coveted Best in Show top prize.

I found it really hard to stay in the movie. The best part about mockumentaries is that even though they're fake, they give you that sense that maybe, just maybe, this could be real. Not that I think these types of movies are real, or that I question if they are real or not, but they at least have an air of reality to them. The problem that kept me from having that with this film, was that the cast was entirely made of recognizable character actors. How am I supposed to get that "reality tv" feeling or that of a documentary when I'm watching Eugene Levy, Michael McKean and Catherine O'Hara?!

Honestly this has got to be the biggest cast of B-list actors and characters actors I've ever seen. Almost every single person in the entire film is recognizable from something. As good and as crazy and amusing as they often are in this movie, I just could get past how far this was from anything believable. Still, there were a number of characters I really liked, like the gay pair with Michael McKean and John Michael Higgins. The screaming crazy obsessive pair, and the really slow owner of the hound dog were fun to me too.

In the end, I don't think I really liked it that much. I was often really bored and I kept finding myself losing my attention on the movie, wondering how much longer it was until it was over. There were a few moments of smirks I got from the characters I liked, but there were just as many really annoying terrible characters that I hated. This is really going to be a hit or miss with a lot of people, but I have a feeling that even the "hits" won't be very strong. It's not terrible, but I'd say skip it, it's not really worth going out of your way to see.