Dogs, nerds prove to be comic gold

Animals in film are usually the comedic kiss of death. There is no better sign that a film is underwritten than the inclusion of a dog in a funny sweater or a farting seal - a stroke of casting equally cruel to the audience, the actors and the animals themselves, who would probably prefer that their eyes be used to test hairspray-covered sandpaper.

Christopher Guest, a man with an absolutely wicked grasp of comic subtlety, understands the pitfalls of animal comedy. One-upping Shakespeare's use of a whimsical dog in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," director/screenwriter Guest uses the dogs in his new film "Best of Show" not as comic set-pieces, but as the ultimate straight men - the dogs are not funny at all, but their blankness highlights the depravity of the humans around them.

"Best in Show" centers around the fictional Mayflower Kennel Club dog show and six way-too-driven dog lovers questing alongside their pooches for the titular award. Shot in the same mockumentary style popularized by Guest's masterpiece "This is Spinal Tap," the film gives audiences an inside look at the surprisingly Machiavellian undercurrents of the inbred-showdog world.

Like "Spinal Tap" and Guest's other significant mockumentary "Waiting for Guffman," the film is almost entirely improvised from a skeletal script.