well!...last night a group of 15 of us from the FSGW folk group and ghetto (including 3 or 4 who got almost ALL the references)met and sat en masse in a fairly full theater to see this reamarkable film. I will confess, I had NO idea of it's theme when I went in. (unlike most of the group)..As it slowly sank into my head what was happening, my patented *grin* spread acroos my face and, with the exception of the times when I laughed/guffawed out loud, stayed there for the duration!

Sure, there were omissions,(no way to show the entire 'concert) and you can't tailor parodies to meet everyone's concept of how it was....but, wow!...they captured the essential stereotypes so well that it would have been painful, if it weren't so funny! And they stopped JUST short of hokey criticism and embarassing stupidity. Those characters in the film were having fun, and doing what THEY liked, and THEY were as happy with their 'reunion' as anyone could expect.

I saw, months ago, some REAL reunion/retrospective concert on (PBS?) and found I could NOT watch it all, as the performers were all too 'real', and unaware of the spectre they were participating in....but I WOULD have loved to see outtakes of THEIR rehearsals and planning for the concert!

The songs in the movie WERE well done, in that they were so perfectly mediocre that only careful listening told you how BAD they were.

I was shaking my head in wonder at the cocktail party where the camera panned briefly over the one old black 'bluesman' who was enduring his 'token appearance' with a nod and a mumbled word or 2..and "Mickey", cashing in on her renewed 'fame' by playing autoharp at the trade show 6 months later was a masterpiece of poignancy.

Also, a wonderful touch was the way "Mitch" raised himself from his bumbling, tormented ineptness, barely able to sing and chord, to recapturing not only his 'musicianship', but his mind, just long enough to do the show....that part was not necessary for the success of the film as a whole, but it added a needed 'theme' to focus on.

There was general agreement that someone will get the DVD and we will all watch it again together sometime when we can pause it to laugh, discuss, point out details, rewind parts and run to the john without missing anything!

'Twas quite a trick to make that movie, I'd suspect....I found myself telling someone in our group, tongue-in-cheek, that it was "12 years in the filming", because they had to re-shoot so many scenes trying to get the actors to quit giggling and rolling their eyes.(Yes, I saw the Chris Guest explanation that a lot of it was done spontaneously....but...*grin*)

Go see it, folks....