A Mighty Wind
Have you ever wondered what would have happened if Cher hadn’t been quite so succesful as a solo singer? Or what your favourite rock group might have been like if they performed in a different genre? Say, folk music? Well, this movie contains the answers to those vital questions. Most people will be most familiar with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer together as Spinal Tap, the incompetent imploding English rock group (whose amps go up to 11) captured so memorably in the ‘mockumentary’ This is Spinal Tap by Rob Reiner in 1984. What you get in A Mighty Wind is kind of the same, but a bit grown up. Just like the three main performers.
Irving Steinbloom, a concert promoter important to the 1960s folk scene, has just died, and the groups he helped to shoot to stardom want to get back together for a tribute concert to the great man. The film follows the re-uniting of The Folksmen (the aforementioned Guest, McKean and Shearer), Mitch & Mickey (quite clearly modelled on Sonny & Cher) and the Main Street Singers, who are now in fact The New Main Street Singers, and generally regarded as frivolous fluff by the other performers. We see the bands recruit new members, rehearse old tunes and relive past loves as they make their way towards the concert in the Town Hall, with egos and eccentricity at the forefront.
Written by Guest and Eugene Levy, who also performs brilliantly as the demented-through-success-and-failure Mitch, the film takes fairly gentle and affectionate pot-shots at the foibles of musicians, and the cliches of the folk scene in particular. Unfortunately it also feels the need to include a fair amount of sexual references which I’m certain could have been omitted in favour of something funnier, but taken as a whole the script is warm and uncynical. What’s more, all the songs performed by the folk groups were written by McKean and Guest, with considerable authenticity - in fact, this is perhaps one of the problems with the film. When the groups are finally seen performing at the concert at the end, they are almost too slick, and the sharpness of the parody is lost sightly.
There are some standout performances and great characters, from Eugene Levy’s stuttering Mitch to the incredibly low-voiced Harry Shearer (sounding particularly like alter ego Reverend Lovejoy in this role), and one incessantly chirpy female member of the New Main Street Singers with her nonsensical alternative religion (based on the feelings she gets from certain colours - and she states quite seriously that it only exists in her head). But at the same time you get the feeling that some jokes will only be got fully by those who were around at the time of the 1960s folk explosion; we can laugh at the titles of old-fashioned folk albums, but it seems likely that these kinds of digs are deeper than at first sight.
On the whole, if you loved Spinal Tap, or Drop Dead Gorgeous, you’ll enjoy this. It doesn’t have anything like the bite of those two movies, but is not an unpleasant way to spend an evening.
