A Mighty Wind (2003)

Just perfect...

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

The narrative framework is folk singing, but this is a movie made by a bunch of friends who have a genuine love of performing. All the dialogue is improvised, the humor is inspired.Bonus points for the "Up With People" sendup.

The Christopher Guest music "mockumentary" strikes again within the folk music genre. He, along with Michael McKean and Harry Shearer and company have written and played their own songs that are quite close to the cheesy originals they were based upon. Funny that many will downgrade such a creation as it was supposed to be the music that was the base of the humor. Where performance can be funny (see "This Is Spinal Tap") the folk performances are a bit silly to start. If the music isn't legitimate, then the character based humor doesn't work and the characters are truly gems here. I may be the only one who found Eugene Levys' "Mitch" to be absolutely brilliant where others said he wasn't their cup of tea.... must not of hung around pretentious wanna be poet musicians! The PBS show is also brilliant with its silly drama that also is true to back stage dilemmas, a missing musician, other band set lists and caring about seeing another band perform. I have watched this movie a dozen times, but admit it may not be as delightful for everyone. The writing was so spot on that "when you put it that way, it's almost poetry. Almost."

There are two substantial problems with this film, neither making it unwatchable, although I confess they did make me feel uncomfortable. The first is that director Guest cannot capture any of the various "documentary" camera styles widely known with the necessary degree of accuracy; this isn't cinema verite, nor do we get successful sequences of talking heads. Even the concert scenes fail to emulate concert documentaries. Visually, then, we are always reminded that we are not watching a documentary but a mockumentary - we can't really allow ourselves the 'willing suspension of disbelief' such a satire requires from us. This problem is exasperated by some of the actors' performances who are trying way too hard to be funny, rather than play straight and let the ridiculous situations call out laughter.The second problem is more troubling; the music is too good! Most of these songs are not "mock folk music," they ARE '60s style folk songs. Take even the title track: "A Mighty Wind" as a title is amusing in that it evokes flatulence; but by the time you get to such lyrics "a mighty wind of freedom/ blowing for you and me" you wonder where the joke is? That is after all exactly what many folkies thought was going on in the '60s, which makes the song dynamically expressive of that era.Comparisons with "This is Spinal Tap" are of course unavoidable. The songs of "Spinal Tap" came to within a hair's breadth of real heavy metal, but push comes to shove, most real heavy metal songs escape their own pretentiousness by 'rocking out,' they are, bottom line, just variant forms of traditional rock songs; Spinal Tap, to make their point and remain funny, kept their pretentiousness meter pushed to 11.Another issue in comparison indicates where "Mighty Wind" goes wrong. Both heavy metal and folk music had substantial sub-cultures develop around them. But when "Spinal Tap" was released the heavy metal sub-culture was alive and thriving, about to receive new blood with bands in NYC ad LA. The folk music subculture was dead by 1977; a lot of folkies did end up in business or academia and moved quietly into the suburbs (those refusing this route gathered 'round the Grateful Dead, a phenomenon requiring a whole other movie to explore). Consequently, a "where are they now" satire about folk singers ultimately requires a satire on 'midddle America,' and of course that's really too broad a subject for a film that wants so much to highlight the music involved.In short then, "A Mighty Wind" fails to explore humorously the historical dissonance between where folk musicians came from and where they ended up - a dissonance captured powerfully (with much unintentional irony) in the study of Jerry Garcia's friendship with David Grisman, "Grateful Dawg." It's a dissonance strong enough to have fueled the addiction that killed Garcia; it is a dissonance that still quietly influences our current politics and cultural reference points. And while director Guest clearly tries to stab insightfully into the the heart of this dissonance, he doesn't even scratch the surface; that the Folksmen are last seen playing in the foyer of a casino maybe ironic, but since they are, in the last analysis professional musicians trying to earn a living, the irony is all about the casino, not the musicians. Their talent, and the entertainment value of their songs, remain untouched; it is simply not the '60s anymore.Entertaining, but more for the music than the comedy, which is faint praise indeed.

The weakest in Guest's series of mockumentaries, but still enjoyable. The casting is predictably clever, but it seems that the improvisation wasn't working that well this time around; there are several scenes that contain nothing even vaguely humorous about them. I like Guest's subtle style, but perhaps AMW's humour is too subtle for its own good. If you're going to go after country music, especially the more commercial crap, then you ought to go for the jugular. No "Police Academy"-type nonsense, of course, but a little more energy would have done the movie good.Surprisingly, the folk music version of Spinal Tap, the Folksmen, were among the least funny in the movie! More interesting was Higgins playing the colour-worshipper, and the annoyed theater manager.I was disappointed that Guest even tried to inject some soppy sentimentality into the Mickey/Mitch story; perhaps a sign of Guest's aging? Empty schmaltz should be left to shoddy TV sitcoms like "Friends", it has absolutely no place in intelligent parody/satire. Levy's character seemed wacky enough to create a plethora of silly situations and dialogue, but this potential was left largely unused.AMW is, however, the type of comedy that gets better on additional viewing. Guest's follow-up about Hollywood is better. Perhaps country music wasn't such a good idea...