By Travis Johnson
Christopher Guest has spent his career turning his wryly acerbic eye on all manner of weird little subcultures, from the strange world of dog shoes (Best in Show), to folk music (A Mighty Wind) to community theatre (Waiting for Guffman). Guest operates at the exact point where human fallibility meets pomposity, reveling in the absurdity of people trying to make their mundane peccadilloes seem grandiose and dramatic. Now he’s bringing that sensibility to the world of professional sports mascots, of all things, in the appropriately-titled Netflix Original Movie, Mascots.
Focusing on the Fluffies, the mascotting equivalent of the Oscars (hopefully not a real thing, but some people take this stuff awfully seriously), the film utilises Guest’s usual mockumentary format to skewer a sprawling ensemble of delusional glory hounds, encompassing a swathe of his regular collaborators – Jane Lynch, Parker Posey, Fred Willard, Ed Begley, Jr., Christopher Moynihan, Don Lake, Brad Williams, Zach Woods, Chris O’Dowd, Matt Griesser, Susan Yeagley, Sarah Baker, Tom Bennett, Kerry Godliman, Bob Balaban, Jennifer Coolidge, Michael Hitchcock, Maria Blasucci, John Michael Higgins, and Jim Piddock are all on board. It’s all largely improv, something Guest was refining into an art form long before an entire generation of American comedy directors decided it was easier than writing a script – which is to say, when Guest does it, it’s sublime.
Mascots makes its debut at the Toronto Film Festival on Saturday, September 10, before launching globally on Netflix on October 13.
