Let’s begin this review of the new Christopher Guest film Mascots with a segue.
Waiting for Guffman is my favorite movie of all time. There isn’t one single, solitary scene in that mockumentary that doesn’t at least make me chuckle, even on the 50th viewing. It’s pitch perfect in it’s balance of pathos and comedy. We’re supposed to laugh at these characters but we’re also supposed to root for them as well.
Guffman was the first in a series of mockumentary films he would direct over the years. His second one, Best In Show, is usually credited as the breakout star and one that really caught the attention of the masses. A Mighty Wind was funny but, unlike it’s predecessors, this time it’s subjects were legitimately talented at their craft (music) which undercut the comedic effect slightly. For Your Consideration, unfortunately, is where the wheels started to come off a bit. Some of the mainstays opted out and they were replaced by higher-profile actors. The result was middling.
If we were still buying DVDs, the four-pack of those films would make for a fantastic boxset for comedy fans out there. And as the years passed, it looked more and more like that was going to be the end of the run anyway for Guest and his self-made movie empire. Then, as has happened for so many other creators, Netflix came calling and that’s how we ended up with Mascots, the fifth Christopher Guest mockumentary film.
I brought up all of the preceding information just because I want you to be aware of how I feel about Christopher Guest and his oeuvre.
Okay, so, Mascots.
Mascots…
Okay…
So.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swTWozTxQ-E
Mascots is ostensibly a mockumentary about a group of people who dress up as sports mascots as they prepare for and then attend the World Mascot Association Championships. I say ostensibly because the film does away with the conceit at-will, to the point where it’s shot more like a regular feature than as if a documentary crew is following people around. Perhaps that’s a nitpick but it’s also a harbinger of the lack of specificity and attention to detail to come.
The film follows a slew of characters throughout. Mike & Mindy Murray (The Office‘s Zach Woods & Go On’s Sarah Baker) are a bickering married couple who are also a mascot duo for a minor league baseball team. Cindi Babineaux (Parker Posey) is an enthusiastic woman who loves to do interpretive dance as an armadillo. Tommy ‘Zook’ Zucarello (Chris O’Dowd) is the “bad boy of mascotry,” an anthropomorphic fist that embodies his fighting spirit. Phil Mayhew (Christopher Moynihan) is a sad sack who dresses up like a plumber and wants desperately to fit in. Owen Golly (Tom Bennett) is a third-generation mascot from England feeling the pressure from his father to live up to the family legacy.
There’s also plenty of familiar faces from previous Guest films, including Fred Willard as a mascot agent (of course), Jennifer Coolidge as a trophy wife (of course), Bob Balaban as a straight-laced rich guy (of course), and John Michael Higgins as a smug executive (of course). Ed Begley, Jr. and Jane Lynch also show up as mascot contest judges.
Striped down to it’s bare bones, Mascots follows the exact same trajectory and storyline as the previous mockumentaries, but there’s something those films had that this one doesn’t. A real sense of specificity and interest in making us care about these people. Because the film forgets that it’s supposed to be a (pretend) documentary, it then seems to forgot to do anything other than go through the machinations of plot as we move from Point A to Point B to Point C, stopping only briefly for interludes that don’t quite tie into anything.
It also doesn’t help that so many of these characters and relationships are lifted wholesale from previous Guest films. The bickering couple is a less funny version of the one in Best In Show. The potential love affairs occurring offstage don’t hold a candle to A Mighty Wind’s. The climactic performances are dull and predictable, unlike Guffman’s show performance which was clever, joke-laden, and well-crafted.
While full of talented people, the cast couldn’t quite live up the challenge either. Guest’s films are reliant on improvisation from the actors to not only tell the story but also provide quirky humor. Most of the time that doesn’t come through and you find yourself wishing Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, and Michael McKean were here to show everyone how it’s done.
I really hate to say this but it all felt a bit lazy, cobbled together, and lacking in the love and care that we’ve come to expect from these films. Sure it looks like the production didn’t have a lot of money but neither did Waiting For Guffman. In Guffman, however, we really get to understand who these people are and what they want. In Mascots, we get a vague sense of who these people are, we watch then get involved in situations that don’t really bear fruit, and then the movie ends. There are multiple instances where a character finds themselves in a dramatic situation that is either resolved or forgotten about in the next scene. There’s also an over-reliance on scatalogical humor and dick jokes, which feels out of place with the way the previous films sought their comedy.
To be fair, there are funny moments peppered in there. Fred Willard and Jennifer Coolidge brought their A-games as usual. Guest himself shows up at one point, reprising the role of Corky St. Clair from Guffman. The scenes involving him and Parker Posey were so good that they were almost too good for the film’s sake. It made me wish that Posey had also just reprised the role of Libby May Brown and we followed the two of them on a road-trip instead.
I can’t stress enough that I take no joy in writing this and it bums me out that Mascots turned out this way. It reminded me of a scene in the movie Multiplicity when the Michael Keaton clones decide to clone themselves and end up with a copy of a copy. It looked like the original. It had a lot of the same characteristics of the original. But it was so far removed from the quality of the original that it made you wish it hadn’t been made in the first place.
I don’t know if it’s a case of the magic being gone, a series of unfortunate events behind the scenes, or a bit of both, but when it comes down to it I can’t imagine I’ll ever watch Mascots again. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make myself feel better by watching Waiting For Guffman for the 217th time.
