Best in Show is directed by Christopher Guest, this movie is mainly on five dogs and their owners were prepared to join the Annual Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show in Philadelphia. At first I thought this film was weird, Christopher Guest portrays the film in a documentary-like setting, each person’s story was told one at a time. I watched for about 20 minutes, and slightly puzzled by what was going on. Then I started to laugh and didn’t stop until the movie ended.
The actors do a brilliant job of half learnt, half improvised lines. The characters are all believable stereotypes: the yuppies, the millionaire glamour queen, the gays, the hillbilly, Mr. and Mrs. ordinary with separate pasts, and the dogs themselves are great, and probably are overlooked in most reviews. They definitely have personalities of their own, and they seem very normal compared to their handlers – much like the kids whose parents make them endure high profile talent shows. The whole movie really takes place in when they arrived in PA for the show competition. I think this movie is not really about dogs, it was something like a commentary on relationships. From the interaction between Gerry and Cookie Fleck, a middle-class couple from Florida who run into monetary problems and are forced to sleep in the hotel’s storage room when they finally arrive. The Flecks to the interplay of the two commentators at the Mayflower, it was obvious that source of the humor was really the interplay between people, not the quirkiness of dog owners. It was only more obvious because the humans tried to use the dogs as surrogate partners if they didn’t get the response that they were looking to get! I really like dogs so I enjoyed this movie, and it was really funny as well.