Review of A MIGHTY WIND

"Director Christopher Guest took the overwhelming success of his role in Rob Reiner's hilarious mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap (about an aging heavy metal band) to direct a slightly less hilarious Waiting for Guffman (about the participants of a community theatre production) twelve years later. Next was the funny Best in Show (about dog show folk), and now we have A Mighty Wind (about folk singers), an occasionally amusing but decidedly unsuccessful foray into the genre. The movie has its moments and flashes of inspiration, but Guest and his cast have problems maintaining the level of believability. What made Spinal Tap, Guffman, and, to a lesser extent, Show funny was not the fact that we thought these were members of an actual band, actors, or eccentrics but that we could imagine these kind of people existing somewhere. The cast of characters in A Mighty Wind is expansive, and intimacy is lost here. The movie simply has too much on its plate, not only focusing on the musicians themselves but also promoters, public television executives, a failed television personality, and a slew of other people. Without a familiarity with its characters, the movie plays out more like what it is—a group of actors having lots of fun and trying for laughs—than what it pretends to be."

Mark's Full Review