Mascots (2016)

(Flash Review)The latest in this style of Guest movies is just as funny as the rest. The focus in the story are the lives of sports mascots as they build up to a national competition of their routines. As expected, you dive into each mascot's personal life to get a feel for who they are and why they are mascots. It felt like a carbon copy of Best In Show with replacing a dog show with a mascot competition. Same comedic style as we are being serious yet end up being clever and dryly comical. More laugh out loud moments were portions of the mascot routines which each had unique style and approaches.

It seemed reasonable that after a decade away from feature filmmaking, Christopher Guest would return in a big way. His quirky and lovable comedies with equally quirky and lovable characters in "This Is Spinal Tap," "Waiting for Guffman," and "Best in Show" launched the mockumentary sub-genre, giving life to other successful films and TV shows. That seemed to provide proof enough that 2006's "For Your Consideration" was a misstep rather than a loss of mojo, but the equally flat "Mascots" suggests being quirky and lovable isn't so simple after all.All of Guest's films have stayed to a certain formula, a parody of average people who have big dreams, debatable talent and an inflated sense of self-importance. This documentary style of mixing testimonial with drama created space for talented improvisational actors to create hysterical caricatures, but their passions and dreams made them easy for audiences to relate to, no matter how silly. "Mascots" fits that mold. Mascot-ing is certainly an obscure "art form" that has the competition/performance elements that its predecessors had. A number of Guest's regulars appear in parts big and small (Parker Posey, Fred Willard, Bob Balaban, Jennifer Coolidge, John Michael Higgins and more) to offer dependability while fresh faces in contemporary comedy join in (Chris O'Dowd, Zach Woods, Sarah Baker, Tom Bennett and more) to add a little novelty. Yet "Mascots" just isn't interesting or funny enough.One obvious culprit is the cast size. There are a lot of mascots to focus on: Mike and Mindy Murray (Woods and Baker) the bickering mascot couple; Owen Golly (Bennett), the third generation mascot; Cindi Babineaux (Posey) the serious dance artist; Phil Mayhew (Christopher Moynihan) the overly passionate mascot who's kinda sad; and Tommy Zucarello (O'Dowd) the mascot who couldn't care less. They all fight for screen time, and that doesn't include the various event organizers, judges and coaches that eat away at their share.More of the problem could be that none of them have particularly compelling sub-plots or back stories that make their characters funny or interesting. They're all fairly archetypal. Each actor uncovers bits of genuinely funny comedy, but that humor comes in the smallest parcels in the smallest moments and doesn't impact the overall comedic impression of the larger scenes it's in, let alone the overall movie.We also don't get a full sense of what's at stake. Winning first place at the mascot competition only matters if there's investment in all the competitors and Guest sets some of them up to win our affections and some of them up to fail, making it not all that conflicting or suspenseful when it comes time for the competition. None of that would matter, of course, if more of "Mascots" was laugh-out-loud funny. The quirkiness works for chuckles, but the big moments when we expect comedic payoff are fairly predictable and unremarkable. At one point you realize "Mascots" really only came into existence for fans of Guest's mockumentaries, and that's when Guest reprises a role from one of his earlier films. It's the ultimate sign of pandering and perhaps an indicator that "Mascots" never had enough legs to stand on its own in the first place.You have to believe with all your heart that the right script could exist to rejuvenate this formula, but it's clear Guest didn't have the ambition, at least not yet. Considering it's been 10 years and he's not getting any younger, you have to wonder if we've seen the best he has to offer. I hope not, but four good movies from the same core concept ain't bad.~Steven CThanks for reading! Visit Movie Muse Reviews for more.

I love Best In Show. It's probably in my top 20 favorite movies list of all time. But Mascots is almost un-watchable. It is pretty much exactly the same as BIS, a bunch of quirky characters coming together for a competitive, ending with a 1 year followed up. With most of the same stars and a ton of improv practice from This Is Spinal Tap, BIS, Waiting for Guffman and the folk singing one (terrible as well, I can't even remember the name), you would think there would be some laughs......but i just couldn't even bring myself to smile. The were a couple characters that had the potential to be funny, but really all they did was recycle them from the other movies. And it just didn't work. This formula that they use over and over is just not funny anymore.

We were waiting for this movie to become available after seeing some previews and were not disappointed. I was surprised at the awful reviews--maybe the humor is just too subtle for some folks. It was clever and amusing, with a lot of little amusing details. It's not my favorite of his movies (that would be Best in Show), but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to fans. Fred Willard's character is even more cringe-making than usual, Parker Posey plays pathetically un-self-aware women with such skill, and I really admire the willingness of this group of actors to make themselves pretty unattractive and awkward in the service of the faux-documentary style.