Writer-director Christopher Guest reteams with much of his Waiting for Guffman cast for another mock documentary, this time about a series of dog lovers whose reasons for being revolve around a canine competition. Top to bottom a master class in structured improvisation on the parts of Guest, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, Michael Hitchcock, Michael McKean, John Michael Higgins, Jennifer Coolidge, and Jane Lynch—and then Fred Willard comes over the top as the competition’s clueless, self-amused TV host. As in Guffman, these performances work because they’re not spoofs, but in the best cases (Levy, O’Hara, McKean) loving caricatures that turn into lovable characters.
