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A MIGHTY WIND Send This Review to a Friend
Writer-Director Christopher Guest ("Waiting for Guffman" and "Best in Show") is in his satirical mode again, and this time he is having fun with a fake documentary extolling the era of folk music. "A Mighty Wind" turns the trick of being funny most of the time, and yet showing affection for the folk genre and for the artists who might have been models for his jesting.
In Guest's set-up a producing icon, Irving Steinbloom, has died, and as a tribute to his dad, Steinbloom's son Johnathan, amusingly portrayed with fidgety solemnity and a deadpan style by Bob Balaban, is staging a hastily put together concert at New York's Town Hall. It requires the reuniting of stars of yore and smooth talking to get them together once more.
There's the 1960s duo of Mitch and Mickey, but with a problem. Mitch, drolly played by Eugene Levy, is somewhat spaced out, having retreated after a breakup with Mickey (Catherine O'Hara), after their love and professional relationship hit the rocks. A great moment for these recording artists was when their concert culminated in a kiss. Will they perform together? If they do, will they kiss this time?
There are also The Folksmen, played by Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer; fans had to punch holes in the center of their records to play them. The Folksmen might be taken as a spoof on The Kingston Trio or The Weavers, but by the outrageous ending you may find them more like Peter, Paul and Mary.
And what can we make of the ever cheerful New Main Street Singers, an entourage that includes John Mitchell Higgins, Jane Lynch and Parker Posey? It's the sort of a group that could have been inspired by The New Christy Minstrels.
Although the film slows here and there, the overall impact is humorously upbeat, whether the fun is found in the oddball numbers or in the character portraits of the stars. Underneath it all is a fond recollection of the very folk period that is being spoofed, and it is nice that the warmth peeks through between the laughs.
New Yorkers will recognize the outside shot of Town Hall but not the inside. The interior of the Orpheum Theatre on Broadway in Los Angeles was used as a substitute. A Warner Brothers release.
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