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A Mighty Wind

If you're over 50, and American, this movie is a howl, from the makers and performers of This Is Spinal Tap (mainly Christopher Guest). It's an old movie – came out last year – but Wei and I got it via gift NetFlix.

Instead of being a fake documentary about rock bands, this one is about folk bands of the 60s. I have no idea if it would be so funny to young people, like 40-year-olds. But if, as a kid, you were subjected, on shows like The Smothers Brothers, to bands like Peter Paul and Mary or The Kingston Trio, or even The New Christy Minstrels, and kinda half liked it but kinda half-thought, "What is WITH these white-bread posers?", and if you ever dated an earnest Laura Nyro fan, you will surely be able to appreciate this.

Like Spinal Tap and Best in Show, the satire is merciless but often pretty subtle, with zillions of muttered throwaway lines that KILL. I haven't seen this team's take on dinner theater, Waiting for Guffman, but that's next on our NetFlix list. Because Princess Wei and I both have personal experience with these various low-end fringes of showbiz, these skewerings are especially, um, poignant, painful and hilarious.

Eugene Levy plays a kind of Bob Dylan gone Janor that's GOTTA be based on some REAL wretch. Fred Willard does his usual amazing job playing a happy, clueless asshole, and the 3 Spinal stooges are every bit as good playing The Folksmen. A lot of the characters are painfully close to the would-be Pete Seegers and failed Joan Baezes that you now see running PTA meetings.

I hadn't seen most of these actors in some time, and as each one appeared, I thought, "My god, he's so OLD now!" Most of them are probably a couple of years older than I am.

I would still do Catherine O'Hara even though she looks like somebody's Granny now.

A Mighty Wind is Coming – It's Blowing You and Me

– Review by Rev. Ivan Stang