Mascots

So I'm going to be totally up front, I am not very familiar with Christopher Guest's work. I watched about half of Waiting For Guffman when I was in Middle School and I can't remember one bit of it. I just know that Guest has a particular style of comedic writing.

The other thing I have to admit is the fact that I have become interested in Guest's work because I recently started watching Schitt's Creek which was created and stars Guest's writing partner Eugene Levy. I honestly got the urge to watch this movie because I thought that contributed to the writing in the same way he did for Waiting For Guffman and Best in Show... turns out Levy had absolutely nothing to do with Mascots and I didn't figure that out until about 10 minutes into the film. Regardless, I wanted to explore a little bit into the writing of Guest which isn't too far off from Levy's and I decided to follow through and finish Mascots... And I realized that this might not be the best introduction to Christopher Guest's work.

Mascots is a mockumentary surrounding the Mascot award show called The Fluffies. A kooky cast of characters from around the world come to California for the competition in the hope of taking home the Gold Fluffy award. The cast includes an unhappily married couple who dress up like an octopus and a turtle played by Zach Woods and Sarah Baker, a single man looking for love while dressing up like a plummer played by Christopher Moynihan, a sister duo who dress up like an armadillo played by Parker Posey and Susan Yeagley, a British man who dresses up like a hedgehog to fulfill a family tradition of mascotting played by Tom Bennett, and a violent Irish Canadian whose mascot is a giant fist played by Chris O'Dowd.

You may notice that I didn't use any of their character names and the truth is, I don't know if I can remember any of them. You'd think with the mockumentary style film that I'd learn the names pretty quickly when they display it at the beginning but the truth was, none of these characters were really that compelling that I felt the need to learn their name. Jane Lynch is in the film and I just called her the judge played by Jane Lynch.

On top of that, the story didn't grab me in the way I think it should have. The reoccurring joke is that these people are overly excited for a competition that really doesn't matter that much. While in theory it sounds interesting, the pacing and execution of that story felt very odd and almost scotch taped together with all these individual narratives weaving in and out of one another.

Now I'll give credit where its due, this is in the spirit of Christopher Guest and his writing. What I've found from watching Schitt's Creek, Mascots, and from what I remember of Waiting For Guffman is that these shows are filled with absurd characters interacting with other absurd characters in what amounts to an absurd off.

Furthermore, Guest's writing is very, VERY dry. The comedy comes more out of the scenarios and the delivery rather than having a punchline. The unique factor about that is that you need to be paying attention to the film to pick up on the comedic dense dialogue. Unfortunately, the characters and story didn't draw me in enough to want to pay attention to them and in part the jokes and funny dialogue.

And its undoubtedly there in Mascots. The overall premise is very comedic, but my biggest complaint is when there are long drawn out conversations that I know are supposed to be funny, but I just don't care.

Furthermore there are a couple parts in the movie that seemed unnecessarily mean spirited. Another aspect of the characters in this movie is that they are so absurd that they become obtuse and don't really pick up that they're being absurd. And a lot of the times that works, but then you have a scene where the movie takes a really odd pause about 40 minutes in where Fred Willard stops and chats with Brad Williams and makes far too many jokes about how Williams is a little person and he doesn't really understand how that works.

 Honestly, Willard rarely does a whole lot for me in other movies anyway but in this movie he contributed absolutely nothing. I get that the dialogue is absurd, but for me there are limits to how obtuse someone can be before it just gets offensive.

And this wasn't the only moment that seemed out of place and mean spirited. For example they spend a whole 5 minutes talking about how someone used to be the mascot for a team called the Squaws and questioning whether or not that's offensive. Or when Christopher Moynihan is recruited to perform his mascot routine to a school full of blind kids.

I'm not saying these jokes couldn't have been funny or that they're off limits, but the way they're incorporated into this movie isn't really done in a smart or funny way. They more seem to be thrown in there just for the sake of being shock humor and that doesn't really do it for me.

The last real issue I had with the film was how little and late the actual use of mascots were used in this film.

I should clarify real quick because the truth is, I think Mascots are actually really funny. I'm from Minnesota and we happen to have a lot of really good mascots. During our sporting events the mascots do manage to do some really fun routines to make people laugh.

Again, on paper, this sounds like a really funny concept for a movie like this. But while we see some of the characters in their mascot costumes prior to the hour mark, it's not till half way through the film that we actually start to seem some physical comedy from the characters and with the exception of a few of the performances that are given, the actual competition didn't do a whole lot for me.

Now I understand that that's kind of part of the point of the movie, that these characters are devoting so much time to a "craft" that is a novelty that is fun in small doses, but I just came out of the film wondering what was the point of dedicating an hour and a half to this movie.

At the end of the movie they do a brief epilogue talking about where these characters are a year later and I realized that I just didn't care about any of them. Which is a shame because there are some pretty funny actors in this movie.

I think Zach Woods is a really funny actor whose dry delivery works perfectly for a Christopher Guest film. I've always really enjoyed Chris O'Dowd, Jane Lynch, Parker Posey, and Ed Begley Jr. But I think with such a large cast with so many different narratives, I felt like certainly a lot of characters and certain plot points were never given the chance to develop and were under utilized.

Are there funny moments in Mascots? Yes.

Personally, while I think they could have done more with it, there's a reoccurring joke about a Furry who goes to the competition and continuously wants to make it a sexual thing, that was pretty funny and got me laughing. But examples like that were so sparsely spaced and inhibited by the poor pacing and failed, often mean spirited jokes, that I must say overall the film didn't do a whole lot for me.

Now I shouldn't be surprised as Netflix's original movies have ultimately been pretty hit or miss with more of an emphasis on the misses, but I have to give them credit for seeking out talent like Christopher Guest to allow the platform to appeal to as many people as they can.

However, Netflix needs to start emphasizing quality over quantity sometime soon. There's a new Disney streaming service coming out soon and with competing services like Hulu and Amazon Prime starting to step up their game, Netflix might start losing the recognition they've done a really good job building up over the past few years.

But Netflix has had these ups and downs in the past and it continues to evolve. I just hope it can evolve sooner rather than later.

But those are my thoughts on the Netflix Original Mascots. What did you think? What's your preferred streaming service? What would you like to see Netflix change? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading.