The key problem with Guest's 6th mockumentary is that it takes too long to establish the characters hence isn't able to finally exploit them for laughs until the 2nd half, which is much better. He could get away with wasting screen time in this manner in a mini-series, where there's more time to introduce us to all of these clowns, but when you sacrifice 30-40 minutes in a 90-minute movie, then you're being overly optimistic and impractical. The entire film should be funny, not just some better-late-than-never pay-off. Surely, he could have written up a much tighter script after a whole decade?
The cast is a mixed bag. From the British contingent I only liked Godliman, whom I recognized from a Ricky Gervais's TV series. The other two actors are bland, boring and unfunny. To be fair though, their parts were written poorly: as if for a soaper. There was very little that was funny or that even appeared to have such an intention. Wasted screen-time, futile dialog. We are supposed to keel over laughing at them, just because they have a family tradition of mascots - which is one of Guest's worst miscalculations ever. That stuff isn't funny at all, not even a bit. The Brit mascot's encounter with a cop was way too unrealistic too be amusing, though Guest slightly rectifies this later by justifying it as "one of my typical Tourette moments with the police". Certainly an original line, slightly amusing, though somewhat baffling too.
Piddock, who co-wrote the script, was totally new to me, I didn't recognize him, and he wasn't even vaguely familiar. But when I checked his bio I realized I'd already watched 5-6 films with him, which really goes to show how utterly forgettable he is. I rarely forget a face, especially after several films, so this is really telling...
Parker Posey wasn't as good as she normally is. She never fails to deliver, or at least as much as a script allows her to, but she wasn't in full form here. Whether that's due to advancing age (it's hard to be as "cute-quirky" at 48 as it was at 28) or whether her part wasn't good enough - it's probably a bit of both. I did like her very silly dance on the campus grounds early on though, that was vintage Posey. Susan Yeagley, a new face for me, who plays her half-sister is very good, one of the best in the cast, as is her fun role as a floozie. She actually upstages Posey, which was unexpected. Though her part was more interesting, admittedly... "People shouldn't be eating raw fish."
Moynahan is bland and uninteresting, as is Woods. These two are so interchangeable, they could have switched roles and nobody would have cared, or better yet: been replaced by more charismatic, much funnier actors. The shtick with Woods and his chubby jealous wife had potential but neither the casting nor the dialog was good enough to squeeze out more from this premise. It had great potential: the tall skinny husband constantly cheating on his "paranoid" chubby little wife should have been expanded, made more central to the plot, and written with one or two more infidelity twists. Instead, there is just the one incident with Yeagley, then another brief glance at her, and just a mention of him having had a fling with Posey in the past. Why wasn't his past with Posey expanded a bit more? But that only serves to remind how much better "Mascots" would have worked as a five-part mini-series.
Willard goes overboard this time. Or rather, his character is exaggerated. His conversation with the dwarf makes him out to be a complete imbecile, which is impossible. He'd be locked up in a loony bin, not hired to help organize events, because this kind of senility would make him completely unemployable. I'm all for laughs, but not at the expense of logic. In particular this kind of reality-based, low-key, satiric type of humour can't afford to play around with such absurdities. Willard has no filter at all, which would have worked if he'd been some hobo who had sneaked into the building, or some kind of impostor or whatever.
Balaban is his usual drab self. I have no idea why Guest thinks he's good enough for these movies. He most certainly isn't. Just another overrated, over-hired nepotist.
Overall, it's a decent film, so it's nonsense to speak of this as Guest's weakest mockumentary. "A Mighty Wind" is the worst one, probably by far: it wasn't funny at all.
But frankly, the older I get the less I enjoy his parodies/satires... Guest focuses too much on being clever, not enough on being outright funny, which is what the best comedies are. (With Monty Python you got both, intellect and hilarity: that's why they were the best.) Instead of me going "this is quite clever" every few minutes, I'd rather find myself laughing out loud, which tends to be rare for his films.
