WAITING FOR GUFFMAN

Starring Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Catherine O'Hara, Parker Posey, and Lewis Arquette Directed by Christopher Guess Rated R, with profanity and violence Running time 84 minutes Jack gives this film a rating of 9 out of 10

(April 11, 1997) -- Waiting for Guffman does for small town life what "This Is Spinal Tap" did for heavy metal. It makes it very, very funny.

Guffman has been created by Christopher Guest in the mockumentary style of Spinal Tap -- that seminal comedy in which he starred as lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel.

In Waiting for Guffman the fake documentary technique is applied to the sesquicentennial pageant in the fictional town of Blaine, Missouri. Guest also stars as Corky St. Clair, a flamboyant, neurotic theater director who moved to Blaine after failing to find success on Broadway. In Blaine, Corky found his niche by adapting the fire-fighting film Backdraft to the stage. The locals still talk about how they could "feel the heat."

For the sesquicentennial, the town board has convinced Corky to stage Red, White and Blaine, a panorama of local history. Theater-goers will learn how a wagon train stopped in Blaine because their scout was convinced he "smelled the Pacific Ocean" and told them they had reached California.

Pageant-goers will also learn how a boy gave the whistle-stopping President McKinley a footstool -- thus earning the community the title "stool capital of America." And they'll learn of the night when a UFO descended on the outskirts of town and took several Blaine residents aboard "for probing."

To act out such illustrious history, Corky auditions a cast that includes Ron and Sheila Albertson (Fred Willard and Catherine O'Hara), husband-and-wife travel agents who have never been out of Blaine; Dairy Queen counter girl Libby Mae Brown (Parker Posey); and a retired taxidermist (Lewis Arquette).

In a surprise move, he tabs acting novice Dr. Pearl (Eugene Levy), the town dentist, to play Blaine's founding father.

Guest and co-writer Levy have structured Waiting for Guffman like a segment on 60 Minutes or 48 Hours, employing interviews, fly-on-the-wall footage of auditions, rehearsals and the pageant itself. Many of the performances are cleverly improvised, heightening the illusion of spontaneity.

Though each of the actors generates moments of hilarity, Guest's Corky St. Clair is clearly the film's most memorable character. Sweetly swishy and highly theatrical, the character flirts perilously with a gay stereotype, but Guest performs with such good humor and affection that he never offended this reviewer.

From the way he describes buying panty hose "for his wife" (whose existence is doubtful) to his collection of My Dinner With Andre action figures, Corky is a comic gem. The film is rated R -- mostly for the profanity in one hilarious scene in which a town resident auditions for the play with a foul-mouthed scene from Raging Bull.