Waiting for Guffman (1997) Review

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(More customer reviews)Waiting for Guffman is another wonderful mockumentary from actor/director Christopher Guest (Spinal Tap, Best in Show) and cowriter/partner in crime Eugene Levy. The film highlights the big dreams and raw (very raw) talent of the five stars of 'Red, White and Blaine,' the celebratory musical commemorating Blaine, Missouri's 150th anniversary.
The humor in Guffman is of the cut-above variety, founded on relationships and underlined by the characters' hopes. Guest plays Corky St. Clair, a refugee from Broadway who has found a niche for his special abilities as the de facto King of Theater in Blaine. Levy plays the town dentist who is auditioning for the very first time. Parker Posey is the perky, poignant and perhaps pathetic ingenue who works at the Dairy Queen. Catherine O'Hara and Fred Willard prove the maxim that matching sweatsuits betray an unhappy marriage. Bob Balaban plays Lloyd Miller the music director who is grounded in reality, although his suggestion that the cast might spend some of the rehearsal time actually practicing the songs and dances is met with hostility. As an ex-theater major from Hays, Kansas I found the characters 100% real even while laughing at the absurdity of their belief in the possibility that they might take their show to Broadway.
The musical itself would make a great cult movie in the vein of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The events commemorated include the settling of Blaine (in which a wagon train leader manages to convince an entire group of people that they've already reached California), the famous UFO sighting and alien encounter, and the founding of the stool-making business which drove Blaine's economy for generations.
The DVD is worth seeing just for the extra features. The commentary by Guest and Levy is more informative than funny. I got the impression that they were distracted from the commentary by the brilliance of certain scenes in the movie. The extra scenes, however, were hilarious. Waiting for Guffman was shot from a bare-bones script and the actors were encouraged to improvise most of the dialogue. From over 60 hours of footage the best scenes were selected: three of the original scenes that didn't get into the musical, an alternate ending for O'Hara and Willard, scenes with characters that never made it into the movie, and an explanation for why the dentist's wife has a Wisconsin accent.

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A former big-city musical star gathers the residents of Blaine, Missouri together to create a production in hopes of being discovered.Genre: Feature Film-ComedyRating: RRelease Date: 3-FEB-2004Media Type: DVD

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