Mighty Wind

April 27, 2003

Catching up on past business… caught Mighty Wind a few weeks back. I’ve been intrigued wih the Folksmen ever since I saw them perform at the Harry Smith tribute. Just the idea of the members of Spinal Tap in old man makeup singing folk songs makes me giggle.

A Mighty Wind features the same crew that Christopher Guest used in Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman, and a lot of the off kilter, improvised humor is still here. The loose plot is based on a big folk reunion show featuring the aforementioned Folksmen and two other acts, The New Main Street Singers and Mickey and Marty. Micky and Marty (Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara) are really the only people with any sort of compelling story, while the rest of the characters are there to hang funny gags on. It works well enough, and I found it as funny as the rest of this crew’s films.

The best feature of the movie are parody folk songs, which are frighteningly authentic. The soundtrack is so deep that many of the best songs don’t even make it to the screen, like the Folksmen “classic” “Blood on the Tracks,” a story ballad about a train that derailed and went INTO a coal mine.

Posted in Moving Pictures