Load of rubbish!!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

This movie is incredibly hilarious, the eccentric people and their dogs competing for the best in show is a great example of intelligent humor. Each of the dog owners and their dogs offered a unique story, and presented an insight into the psychological idiosyncrasies of pet ownership, and competition. And the different stories drew me in and made me curious to learn who would win.

Christopher Guest and friends are now making a mockumentary on the dog show circuit. It's a whole bunch of wacky characters with their wacky problems and their wacky life. Everybody is doing a great job. Michael McKean and John Michael Higgins are the gay couple. Catherine O'Hara is married to Eugene Levy with his insane glasses. Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock are an uptight couple. Jennifer Coolidge is married to an old geezer and Jane Lynch plays her trainer. There is a big problem in this movie. The separate teams have a hard time getting together because they don't really function as a team. They are separate and they stay separate. It limits their interactions and limits the possibility of comedy. It becomes a series of the characters separate and talking into the camera with wacky stories or having a wacky time. It's not until halfway through the movie that the characters start getting together as they prepare for the dog show.

The third movie (though some people count "This is Spinal Tap" as the first of the mockumentaries) from Christopher Guest starring a plethora of comedic talent playing slightly over-the-top quirky characters. I never saw his first film, "Waiting for Guffman", I liked his second, "A Mighty Wind", but this one didn't really cut it for me. It's not a bad film, I just didn't feel the same depth in the characters to find them that humorous in their antics. Perhaps they were too real, not over-the-top enough. Definitely worth a view if you liked the prior films, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for a comedy but who are unfamiliar with Guest's earlier films.

Christopher Guest and his regular cast of improv legends tackle another unsuspecting target in this wild-eyed send up of the competitive dog show circuit. It's a bit more all-audiences than Spinal Tap, while completely skipping the emotional hooks of A Mighty Wind or Waiting For Guffman, but still delivers enough legit snickers to validate a simple retirement as late-night cable network filler. The straight-ahead plot never shows much interest in progressing beyond simple character-driven adventure, and while each member of the cast is good for a smart punchline or two, the roles themselves are universally shallow, narrow caricatures. Fine as a background flick, thrown on to fill the air when your focus will be frequently elsewhere, it will never quite reach the same level as its siblings.