Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Micitype Pretty Good

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

FloodClearwater Waiting for Guffman, the ensemble-driven mock-u-parody of community theater, differs in one engaging way from writer-director-star Christopher Guest's other inspections of American culture at its most banal. Principally, Guffman follows a group of people who (think they) are on life's upslope, building toward a great achievement of teamwork in showbiz. Guest's other movies with the same cast--viz. Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration--are far more concerned with portraying the pathos of the has-been. In Guffman, Guest's character, Corky, is the only has-been, and then only if you count '10 years living in New York and failing auditions' as achieving something in show business. Guffman's characters are small town people at their most stereotypical ordinary selves, people yearning for a brush with the magic of being a part of a really good play. Consider Parker Posey's performance as Libby Mae Brown, the Dairy Queen worker. Posey tells you everything you need to know about the listless ennui of being stuck in a place with nothing to do and no way to grow with a couple of wordless moments where she looks away, her eyes reverberating what is not being said about the failure of dreams. Or take Bob Balaban's portrayal of the quietly suffering music teacher, deposed as the director of the town's annual play in favor of the terrible infant that is Corky (who has lived in New York, after all). The scene where Balaban's character reacts to Corky's reappearance at the helm of the production is a master class in comedic character acting in the most tissue-subtle way that it can be delivered.The thing about the failure of never-weres (as opposed to has-beens) is that the failure brings no sanction, no shame. Americans are raised on tales of "The Little Engine That Could" and Abe Lincoln's failed political campaigns before he became the greatest President in history. In America, if you aren't yet anything, and you try, we root for you. If you fail and try again, we find ourselves rooting twice as hard. This striving of small town nobodys towards the stardust of Broadway, home of another Abe, Abe Guffman, gives this film an emotional resonance fundamentally different from Guest's many other projects (even Spinal Tap). The result is that by the end of the film, we're not at all tired of the characters, or annoyed or sapped by their failure to get discovered. Guest could assemble a new script and make the sequel, could make a "Guffman 2," and it would succeed with both his core audience and with a general audience, because everybody (in America, anyway) loves to see a first-timer try to make it big, whether it is their first attempt, or their tenth.

PennyLane90 Waiting for Guffman is a mockumentary about a small town putting on a production in hopes of making it to Broadway. This new acting trope is led by rather eccentric Corky St. Clair(Christopher Guest), and consists of two travel agents(who have never left town), A Dairy Queen employee, a rather geeky dentist with a lazy eye, and so much more. The movie follows these cast of players with the support of the town, as they put on a production called, "Red, White, and Blaine"(Blaine being the town they live in).What is best about this movie is that the only scripted scenes were that of the actual play. Everything else is completely ad-libbed which makes this movie genuine and just downright funny. Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, in my opinion, are purely brilliant. The plot works, the characters are so offbeat and hysterical that I can still recall almost every single line they said.All in all, Waiting for Guffman is perhaps one of, if not the, funniest movie I have ever seen. 9/10.

classicalsteve Movies seem to fall into three categories. Those not worth seeing, those worth seeing again and again, and those worth a single viewing. In other words, some movies are a single bag of popcorn experience. "Waiting for Guffman" comes under the latter category. Seeing it more than once may diminish it as it doesn't really have much more to say than what the typical movie-goer will pretty much absorb in less than 90 minutes. There are some underlying themes but they are applied with a sledge-hammer. Simultaneously, this is a movie more for people in the entertainment industry, particularly in the Broadway scene, as there are a few in-jokes. Some friends of mine who have worked in live theater swear by it as one of the funniest movies they have ever seen. Not quite as wacky as "Airplane" or "This is Spinal Tap" (which was made by the same people minus Rob Reiner), but "Guffman" has its moments.Briefly, the film is a "mockumentary" (a satirical comedy done in documentary form, like Woody Allen's "Take the Money and Run") about the ridiculousness of small-town theater, and maybe the ridiculousness of small-town Midwest American culture. In short, how Midwest small-town America has about as much culture as the outhouses that line the city blocks during a parade down Main Street. Or at least that's how the filmmakers view the community of Blaine, as a nondescript backward American mistake in Missouri that probably doesn't even show up on the map. Of course the rhetorical viewpoint is a gross stereotype in and of itself. Even the raunchiest of wild west towns occasionally performed Shakespeare. But to get the laughs, the filmmakers portray Blaine as the kind of town that probably thinks "Gomer Pyle USMC" is high art.The thrust of the story, if you can call it a story, is Blaine's attempt to produce a musical based on the history of their town. The details of which could probably be jotted down on a piece of notebook paper and you'd still have more than a page and a half left to fill in a grocery shopping list. The mayor and council members have hired a gay wanna-be Broadway actor/writer/director, Corky St. Clair (Christopher Guest, who also directs the film), to write and oversee the musical. Everything is over of the top, which is of course the point. Simultaneously, Guest as the gay musical director was a little much, even for a film that is supposed to be purely for laughs. His gay personality is incredibly stereotypical, and in many scenes he acts exactly as you would expect him, getting unmanageably hysterical over minute details, or emotional when things don't work his way. Maybe I wanted something a little more to him than just the typical gay director who always has his hands on his hips. The other characters, chiefly the actors and actresses who get the parts for the musical, of course believe they are all unknown stars waiting to happen, destined for stardom, but just never had the chance before. And at one point, the cast is promised that Mr Guffman, a talent scout and agent from New York, will travel to Blaine to see their musical and help launch everybody's careers. Hence the title.Then there is the play itself, the musical about Blaine. Unfortunately, it is not just Bad (capital B) but it is not so bad it's good, of the Plan 9 From Outer Space variety. It is just plain bad. Or idiotic is the better word. It's a romp through Blaine's "history", which actually makes Romper Room look like "Gone With the Wind." The story is narrated directly to the audience by an old coot at a campfire. Just before curtain, we learn that one of the young male actors won't be appearing and Corky will take his place. This was for me the lowest moment of the film. Corky as the replacement makes no attempt to become the character he is playing, but instead just lets his gay personality shine through, particularly during a duet with a young woman where he is supposed to be a young heterosexual soldier about to go to World War I. I felt the scene bordered offensiveness, as a true Broadway actor worth his salt would, whether gay or not, attempt to act in character that was relatively consistent with the script. I think it would have been far funnier if he tried desperately to be more masculine a la "Cage aux Folles" with tragic results.Given these shortcomings, Guffman has its moments. Maybe too many of them. The auditions sequence is almost unbearable, obviously poking fun at the idea that terrible talent always thinks they are much better than they are. A sort of American Idol meets The Gong Show. Some of the best moments are interviews with the locals who trace their history back to the original foundation of Blaine, in which 19th-century pioneers supposedly thought they had reached the west coast and didn't realize they were 2000 miles off before deciding to create their town. Which is of course the idea behind the creation of the Blaine musical and being more than somewhat ill-conceived. Larry Miller as the town mayor is priceless, almost perfect casting. I would have liked a little more screen time for Bob Balaban as the music teacher who conducts the lifeless orchestra. Check out the trumpet player if you get a chance! You have to credit writer/actor/director Guest for at least the most improbable and highly original idea for comedic satire. Maybe it would have actually been funnier and more insightful if Guest had found a town in heartland America and uncovered what made them tick instead of lapsing into such exaggerated stereotypes.

dantown Um, Parker Posey is a red-hot babe. Wait-MOM--could you not TOUCH THE COMPUTER so I could WRITE PLEASE! Anyway this is areally funny movie.Parker is soooooo hot. Anyway, I was not bored by this movie, for the most part.Christopher Guest is a really good director except that he gets these two boring actors, Eugene Levy and that chick who plays his wife- and they just go on and on and on. Catherine O'Hara just doesn't play real. She tries too hard. Dear Catherine--------------------------------------Less is more.The concept is parody. Do parody sweetie.Don't demonstrate acting-just act. The role is not 'performing your resume'.