*** (out of ****)
Starring Bob Balaban, Christopher Guest, John Michael Higgins, Michael Hitchcock, Eugene Levy, Jane Lynch, Michael McKean, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, Harry Shearer, and Fred Willard
Directed by Christopher Guest & written by Guest and Eugene Levy, with original songs by Guest, Higgins, Levy, McKean, O’Hara, Shearer, Annette O’Toole, and Jeffrey C.J. Vanston
2003
91 min PG13
The alumni of the old “Second City TV” sketch comedy—including Eugene Levy, Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Catherine O’Hara—could go on like this forever. They could make movie after movie about people obsessed with something that shouldn’t be taken quite so seriously. They’ve done so with the semi-classic “Spinal Tap,” about rock ‘n roll pomposity, and they’ve done so with “Best in Show,” about competitive dog shows. “Spinal Tap” is probably my favorite because I know the most about rock ‘n roll pomposity. I could imagine them making a good parody of the making of some gargantuan and half-empty epic in the vein of “Titanic” or “Lord of the Rings,” about how the illusion of depth can be given to a project through music, camera angles, or otherwise just saying “this is deep.” Now the “SCTV” crew has done it again with “A Mighty Wind,” a fake documentary (or "mockumentary") about 1960s folk music.
The lasting success of these parodies isn’t just the cruelty of satire but the affection the film obviously has for its hapless protagonists. There’s certainly an audience for vicious bashing, but I’m not in it. “Second City” knows these people are worth laughing at, but do not warrant our hatred. Deep down, the joke is always the same: we giggle at these nice people who are just a little too goofily sincere about something. A music critic, in utter deadpan, calls a televised kiss between a husband-and-wife folk act “not just a great moment for music, but for all humanity.” But “A Mighty Wind” is not needlessly cruel, because it admires the music and the ideals, even if the musicians live in a delusion of their own relevancy while performing at casinos and incontinence conventions.
“A Mighty Wind” follows a reunion concert for the three acts made kind-of famous by a recently-deceased record producer. The producer’s son is in charge of everything. He’s played by Bob Balaban (“Gosford Park” and “Ghost World”), who is second only to Woody Allen when it comes to uptight wimpy intellectuals, and whose ivory-tower New York upbringing seems to have no connection to the folksiness he hopes to assemble. The groups have names like The New Main Street Singers, Mitch and Mickey, and The Folksmen. They sing maudlin folk ditties that are at the same time incredibly, almost suspiciously wholesome, yet, in line with the 1960s, devoid of the religious content that flavors the older bluegrass of, say, “O Brother Where Art Thou?”
The movie begins with the reunion of The Folksmen, a guitar-banjo-bass trio comprised of the same members of Spinal Tap (Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and Michael McKean), in which they share hugs and lame jokes about beer guts and hair loss. Shearer, Guest, and McKean have known one another almost as long in real life, and their rapport is effortless. We move onto the New Main Street Singers (led by Jane Lynch and John Michael Higgins), a nine-piece folk group that has changed its line-up so many times that none of its original members remain to tell them about the late producer. The NMSS perform at amusement parks and on toothpaste commercials, wear matching pastel sweaters, and project that kind of non-stop shining grins that make normal people nervous. The Folksmen call them sellouts and the payoff—the flipside of their projected giddiness—does not disappoint. The NMSS are represented by a sleazebag manager (the hilarious Fred Willard, who played the non-sequitor commentator in “Best in Show”), who slips into the sweater without even attempting the wholesomeness. When accepting a public prize from the city of New York, he begins his speech with a crack about a “swinger’s party.”
But the movie’s centerpiece is Mickey and Mitch (Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy), the once-married duo who shared that famous kiss, now divorced, he crazy, she married to a man who makes adult diapers and isn’t afraid to describe his work. Fresh from the looneybin, the movie “interviews” him in a cheap motel where his neighbors can’t stop getting on their groove. Are Mitch and Mickey still pining for one another? We’re never sure, even after the reunion concert that provides the movie’s climax.
All the accoutrements of “A Mighty Wind” look and feel authentic, including all the retouched “old” photographs as well as several hilarious album covers. Mitch, after his separation from Mickey, is shown in a strait-jacket or digging his own grave, while the overwhelming grins of the New Main Street Singers are nothing short of freaky. The music is as technically indistinguishable from the real hits of the 1960s as the songs of Spinal Tap are from real metal. Of course, it’s also hopeless sugary, and incorporates everything from butterfly kisses to home cooking.
“A Mighty Wind” is a low-key comedy of sighs and giggles. It has a few good belly laughs and I’ll wager audiences older than me will find more satirical. Watching it I was amazed at how well the film copies the generally accepted documentary style. It’s all there: camera angles, speech patterns, pauses, wide-eyed wonder, rambling stories, soppy sentiments. Have Americans seen enough documentaries and pseudo-documentaries that, if a camera were turned on us at any moment, we would start acting like this too? Maybe that’s a part of the charm of “A Mighty Wind” and the other “Second City” films, to be shown that everything we take seriously can be faked.
Finished February 2nd, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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