by Christopher Guest, 1997.
Starring: Lewis Arquette, Bob Balaban, Christopher Guest, Matt Keeslar, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, and Fred Willard.
Rating: 9/10, 8/10.
Waiting For Guffman is a brilliant mockumentary about the making of a musical celebrating the sesquicentennial of a small town in Missouri named Blaine. (Which brings me back to the number five. There are five letters in the name Blaine. Mix them up, mix them around, and what do you get? Nebali. The name of a planet in a galaxy far, far, very far away.)
It’s impossible (for me at least) to explain the ingenious humor of this film, because it’s so wrapped up in context, subtleties, body language, and those sorts of ineffible things. Did I use ineffible right? The cast is, of course, superb. I mean, Christopher Guest. Parker Posey. Catherine O’Hara. Eugene Levy. Need I say more?
I don’t want to talk about any of the jokes or anything, because for one thing, as I’ve explained, they don’t really work except in the movie, and for another thing, it would kind of ruin it, wouldn’t it? Let’s just say that Waiting For Guffman ranks up there with Bringing Up Baby, Annie Hall, and Clue as one of the funniest movies of all time.