Sunday, April 27, 2003

A TEPID BREEZE: We saw the new mockumentary A Mighty Wind last night. If this is the last movie I'm going to see at a theater for the next few months, I'm going to be resentful towards Britain's Fifth Baron Haden-Guest of Saling for quite some time.

A Mighty Wind fails because it is far too gentle at times, and not funny enough at others. The story centers around three reuniting folk groups -- The Folksmen, a trio of Spinal Tap vets Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and the aforementioned Mr. Guest; the overly chipper New Main Street Singers; and Mitch and Mickie, the maudlin former couple portrayed by Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara. And I only cared about the first of the three -- their jokes were funnier, the music-industry satire there had some edge to it, and, frankly, it's just fun seeing Harry Shearer as a bald Amish-looking guy busting out his Seymour Skinner voice in song.

The New Main St. Singers plotline was too punctuated by juvenile sex jokes; the Mitch and Mickie stuff slid past poignancy into patheticness. There was just something about the Levy character's catatonia that made it no longer funny, and while comedy and drama can inhabit the same movie, it wasn't warranted here.

End result: every time the Folksmen weren't on the screen, I was upset. (Also, while it's funny the first time hearing Ed Begley, Jr.'s Scandinavian tv producer's dabbling in Yiddishkeit, it's not funny the tenth time.)

The other problem is structural: the whole movie is building to the big reunion concert at the end, but there's barely any drama or tension about the concert itself. In Best in Show, you wanted to see which dog would win; in Waiting for Guffman, you wanted to see how the musical ended up. But here? There's almost no interaction between the groups. They all show up. They sing their songs. The songs aren't funny -- they're straightforward homages. The concert ends. And, with a brief "six months later" coda, so does the movie.

It's a shame, because these are funny people. Unfortunately, the Shearer-McKean-Guest loose, improvisational appearance on the World Cafe radio show last week was funnier than anything in the movie itself -- the guys were unrestrained, goofy, fun.

So, while you'll laugh a few times when you see it, ultimately A Mighty Wind just blew. What a disappointment.

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