Films featuring
Eugene Levy
Friday, June 29th, 2007
★★★★★
You can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater because then all you have is a wet, critically injured baby.
Reuniting virtually all of the personnel from Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration is a middling Hollywood comedy that trods familiar ground and never quite gets its comedic feet under it. Once again, as in A Mighty Wind, co-writer and director Christopher Guest’s affection for his characters undermines the potential for humor. The subject of Oscar hype in Hollywood might be ripe for scathing satire, but all this movie can manage is a softball thrown underhand.
(more…)
Posted by Paul McElligott in Movie Reviews | On Screen: Bob Balaban, Catherine O'Hara, Christopher Guest, Ed Begley Jr., Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Harry Shearer, Jane Lynch, Mary McCormack, Michael Hitchcock, Michael McKean, Parker Posey | Comments Off
Monday, March 5th, 2007
★★★★★
There was abuse in my family, but it was mostly musical in nature.
The biggest problem with A Mighty Wind is that it gets so involved with telling its story that it occasionally forgets to be comedy. Make no mistake, it’s not a bad story, but it’s not a story of talentless but enthusiastic losers like Waiting For Guffman or of hilariously obsessive dog lovers like Best In Show. The faux-folk musicians in A Mighty Wind are actually quite good at what they do and they’re not clueless buffoons like Spinal Tap. The dramatic elements, especially the story of Mitch (Catherine O’Hara) and Mickey (Eugene Levy) take control and the outright comedic elements, especially those of Fred Willard, tend to hang in the air like a loud fart at a funeral.
(more…)
Posted by Paul McElligott in Movie Reviews | On Screen: Bob Balaban, Catherine O'Hara, Christopher Guest, Ed Begley Jr., Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Harry Shearer, Jane Lynch, John Michael Higgins, Michael Hitchcock, Michael McKean, Parker Posey | Comments Off
Monday, March 5th, 2007
★★★★★
Counting those, you’ve already packed six kimonos… We’re in Philadelphia for 48 hours.
Best In Show is easily the funniest of the three Christopher Guest mockumetaries, if only because it keeps a bit of distance from its subjects and is better able to take its jabs at these uncommonly obsessive people. The movie doesn’t hold dog fanciers up for abject ridicule but it does expect them to be able to take a joke at their expense.
(more…)
Posted by Paul McElligott in Movie Reviews | On Screen: Catherine O'Hara, Christopher Guest, Ed Begley Jr., Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Jane Lynch, Jennifer Coolidge, Jim Piddock, John Michael Higgins, Michael Hitchcock, Michael McKean, Parker Posey | Comments Off
Saturday, March 3rd, 2007
★★★★★
Medicine Man not go near Dances With Stumpy!
Sometime after This Is Spinal Tap bombed at the box office (because its supposed target audience was too stoned or too stupid to realize that it was a joke) and was then revived as a cult hit on home video, an idea must have been germinating in the mind of actor Christopher Guest. The end result was this take on the same basic format, the improvised fake documentary, in a very different setting. While gentler (and quieter) than Tap, Waiting For Guffman is just as funny in its own way.
(more…)
Posted by Paul McElligott in Movie Reviews | On Screen: Bob Balaban, Catherine O'Hara, Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Matt Keeslar, Parker Posey | Comments Off
