BEFORE: Well, there was an appearance by a "furry" last week in "Wish I Was Here", but that was just a teaser, it seems, for a whole film full of people dressed as furry mascots. What kind of person dresses up in a big fuzzy mascot suit to liven up a crowd at a sporting event? I have a feeling this mockumentary will have an agenda in showing us what kind of people might do this.
If only there were some kind of giant, worldwide sporting event going on right now that I could call this a tie-in to, but sadly, there just isn't. OK, baseball is going on right now, and the MLB has the Phillie Phanatic and those guys that dress up in big-headed Presidents costumes and race around the diamond (I want to say for the Nationals, but I'm not sure...) and then there's Mr. Met and probably a bunch of others. But really, it's a very quiet time for sports right now, I checked.
Football doesn't start up for a couple of months, same goes for college football, hockey season ended a couple months ago, same goes for the Winter Olympics, and basketball season JUST ended. That's it, right? Those are all the sports. Again, I apologize for my terrible timing in scheduling this film during this month when there is absolutely nothing of any importance going on in the sports world.
Parker Posey carries over again from "Hemingway & Gellhorn".
THE PLOT: A look into the world of competitive mascots.
AFTER: Of course, there's no "Golden Fluffy" award - for that matter, there's no organization that controls or sanctions sports mascots - the whole system works for teams everywhere on sort of an ad hoc basis, right? We're talking about a bunch of freelancers who put on these suits and dance around, because God help us if these people ever got unionized or formed some kind of trade federation. It would never happen, because any team could just hire someone else to wear each suit, someone not so interested in making a fair wage or getting health benefits, or even some name recognition.
This has to be a narrative device devised by the filmmaker - Christopher Guest, the man who practically invented the modern mockumentary after starring in "This is Spinal Tap" (directed by Rob Reiner), which was so successful that he essentially gave up hope of making any other kind of film in the future. Guest went on to direct "Waiting for Guffman", "Best in Show", "A Mighty Wind" and "For Your Consideration", all of which follow the same format, to conduct fake (half-improv) interviews with funny people playing characters, then pretend to follow them around through the rehearsals and performance of something. Don't get me wrong, I find most of those previous films very funny, but there's something of a law about diminishing returns, and by the time we get to "Mascots", I'm wondering if this format has completely run its course. But after poking fun at the competitive worlds of community theater, dog shows, folk music and the Oscars, what was left?
And as with those other mockumentaries, everything here seems to follow the unwritten formulas, from the veterans to the newcomers, the stuck-up judges to the weaselly agents, the young man trying to impress his father and the married couple failing to hold their relationship together. And everyone is sort of left-of-center and nobody is normal at all, which for a bunch of mascots might be spot-on, for all we know. But you'd think that even in a group of mascots (and the film can't seem to decide if this event is a convention, or a competition, or both) there'd be at least one person with their head screwed on straight (figuratively, not their giant mascot heads...) and this is just not the case.
There are the obligatory "furry" jokes, but it's just one guy trying to sneak into the event, at least there's no implication that nearly everyone in the mascot game is doing it for some bizarre sexual satisfaction, and there are only a few potential hook-ups among the attendees. Instead there are the super-macho mascot types (the Fist) and some people who seem to genuinely love the art of performing (Sid the Hedgehog) but their routines are all much longer and more elaborate than anything that you'd be likely to see in an arena or stadium. So, really, we're not supposed to take any of this seriously, I get that, but then once you realize that, what's the point of putting it all on film, if it ultimately bears no resemblance to what takes place in the real world? I've complained before about the nature of the a cappella competitions seen in "Pitch Perfect", but even though they got many things wrong, at least there ARE a cappella competitions in the real world.
There are no mascot competitions, right? Wait, let me check... OK, I stand corrected, there's the UCA National Mascot Championship, and Goldy the Gopher was the latest champion. But this event piggy-backs off of the Cheerleading National Championship, so it doesn't seem to be a stand-alone event in this country, not yet. Anyway, you'd never see a meeting of all the mascots from all the sports from all the countries, so I stand by my original ruling, that a competition like this would never happen. It's just an excuse for some comedians to play silly loser characters.
Though I will say it's ingenious to have everyone performing in these outfits - the actors could be replaced by professional stuntmen (or stuntwomen) at any time, thanks to movie magic there are no guarantees that the person you see putting on the costume is the same person who does the dancing or the jumping around. Very crafty. But cleverness goes out the window once that post-feminist armadillo dance number begins, that was just horrible. The fact that it was meant to be satirically horrible doesn't excuse how horrible it was.
Also starring Jane Lynch (last heard in "Wreck-It Ralph"), Christopher Guest (last seen in "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian"), Fred Willard (last seen in "Hustle"), Ed Begley Jr. (last seen in "Ghostbusters"), Christopher Moynihan (last seen in "For Your Consideration"), Zach Woods (last seen in "The Post"), Don Lake (last seen in "Downsizing"), Chris O'Dowd (last seen in "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"), Susan Yeagley, Tom Bennett, Kerry Godliman, Bob Balaban (last seen in "No Reservations"), Jennifer Coolidge (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip"), Michael Hitchcock (last seen in "Serenity"), John Michael Higgins (last seen in "Vampire's Kiss"), Jim Piddock (last heard in "Batman: Under the Red Hood"), Sarah Baker (last seen in "Rock the Kasbah"), Brad Williams, Matt Griesser, Maria Blasucci, Kathreen Khavari, Carrie Aizley, with cameos from Oscar Nuñez (last seen in "The 33"), Wayne Wilderson and the voice of Harry Shearer (last seen in "The Robe"!)
RATING: 5 out of 10 shows on the Gluten Free Network
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