A Mighty Wind: Movie, DVD Review (2003)

As with the best satirists—Mark Twain and Evelyn Waugh, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Mel Brooks and Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few—Christopher Guest knows that in order to do satire well, you better be as good as what you're satirizing. If you're not, then the joke, in the end, will likely be on you.

In the director’s latest mockumentary, “A Mighty Wind,” the joke is on the folks behind folk music. Not the political folk of Joan Baez or Bob Dylan, but the foot-tapping, grotesquely cheerful folk of The Kingston Trio or The New Christy Minstrels, music so enthusiastically ebullient, listening to it can pop an artery.

As written by Guest and Eugene Levy, the film isn't as vicious as Guest's "Waiting for Guffman," which sucker-punched small-town theater troupes, or as biting as "Best in Show," which lifted its leg on the awful underbelly of dog shows, or as funny as Rob Reiner’s “This is Spinal Tap,” which featured Guest as both co-writer and co-star, but it does have its moments of savagery, which is what fans expect.

In the film, a celebrated promoter of folk music has recently gone to that great Hootenanny in the sky, an event that inspires his son, Jonathan (Bob Balaban), to organize a reunion concert at New York's Town Hall to honor his memory.

He does so by bringing together those groups his father championed in the mid- to late-'60s, such folk stars as the New Main Street Singers, nine unfortunates who now pay the rent by shucking their songs along the theme park circuit; The Folksmen (Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean), whose albums include “Wishin’” and “Pickin’”; and the infamous Mitch and Mickey (Levy and Catherine O'Hara), whose disastrous split forced Mitch to record “May She Rot in Hell” and “If I Had a Gun” before he retired to a mental institution.

How are they all faring now? Let’s just say that after a youth spent puffing too much magic dragon, the wind blowing against their backs carries with it a distinct whiff of desperation.

With an excellent cast that includes John Michael Higgins, Jane Lynch, Ed Begley Jr., Parker Posey and the indispensable Fred Willard and Jennifer Coolidge, both of whom steal each scene they’re in, “A Mighty Wind” follows all of Guest’s films in that the dialogue is mostly improvised. That gets to the heart of the film’s electrical air of spontaneity, but what ultimately deepens it, particularly at the end, is the great affection Guest has for the times and for his characters

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