‘Mascots’ Is a Welcome Return to Form for Christopher Guest

Christopher Guest’s latest film, Mascots, premiered on Netflix this week, the first time that one of Guest’s directorial efforts has bypassed theaters and gone directly to streaming. It’s been a decade since we’ve last been able to settle into one of his signature mockumentaries, and while it’s not quite up to the standards of his best movies, it’s still pretty great to have his style of comedy back in our lives.

When it comes to comedy movies in the past 20 years, there have been few filmmakers more reliable than Christopher Guest. His first three films — Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind — stand among the funniest films in a generation. And while 2006’s For Your Consideration was an oddly mean-spirited misfire, it was easy to forgive it, seeing as those first three films were so tremendously rewatchable. And all cut from the same cloth, too, with each film presenting in mockumentary format, following a very similar outline. What changed were the topics (community theater; dog owners; folk musicians) and the ever-expanding cast of regulars.

With Mascots , Guest returns after a decade with most (though not all; wither Catherine O’Hara) of his regulars, this time taking on … well, I was going to say “the world of competitive mascots,” but that is not a thing. But what if it were seems to be the driving force here. The throughline for all Guests movies is that there is something funny about people who have genuine passion for things that the rest of us wouldn’t imbue with much prestige. Nobody looks at the mascot on the sidelines of a sporting event and thinks “What a life that person must lead!” But Guest’s movies tend to succeed just by changing a punctuation mark: “What a life must that person lead?”

The major players this time around:

• Parker Posey and Susan Yeagley as sisters (discovered late in life). Posey’s character is an armadillo mascot fond of modern dance, whole Yeagley had to give up her dreams of mascotting after an injury.
• Zach Woods and Sarah Baker as an unhappily married mascot tandem.
• Christopher Moynihan as a big plush plumber.
• Tom Bennett as a third-generation hedgehog mascot looking to place his stern dad (played by co-writer Jim Piddock).
• Chris O’Dowd as a rude, brawling hockey mascot called The Fist. He’s just one big fist.

Other Guest regulars orbit the proceedings: Jane Lynch and Ed Begley Jr. as judges (former mascots themselves); Bob Balaban and Jennifer Coolidge as sports team owners; Fred Willard literally just hanging out and being Fred Willard; Guest himself reprising his Corky St. Clair role from Waiting for Guffman, an idea that thrills on paper but (perhaps unavoidably) disappoints in practice.

If not everything in Mascots works, so much of it does, from Posey’s interpretive dancing to an extended debate about the nature of the word “squaw” to a runner about randy Furries. And as strong as the cast is, Tom Bennett steals yet another film away from strong competition in 2016. Bennett already walked away with Whit Stillman’s period comedy Love & Friendship earlier this year, playing a clueless suitor. He’s a bit less of a dunce here (inasmuch as anyone in a Christopher Guest movie can be said to be not a dunce). Here, he’s silly but also sweet as the son of a hedgehog mascot struggling to keep up with expectations. It’s the hedgehog’s performance at the mascot championships that provides Mascots with the one tiny moment of heart that suffuses the rest of the movie. Kind of like Mitch and Mickey’s duet in A Mighty Wind. It’s really a lovely moment, and one of my favorite scenes from a movie this year.

Mascots premieres on Netflix on October 13.