BEST IN SHOW

The answer is no. Best in Show begins with an easy target—a prestigious dog show—and builds a mockumentary around people whose vanity, eccentricities, and flaws are placed under an unforgiving camera. But the movie’s jokes depend on mocking nearly every group it presents, along with grotesque toilet humor and sexual innuendo.

The satire quickly becomes a one-joke exercise. The direct-to-camera style wears thin, the trip to the dog show is largely humorless, and the film offers no hero or sympathetic center—not even the dogs. Its PG-13 rating does not make it suitable for families.

Skip this one, and choose a comedy that can be funny without making contempt its central posture.

Several couples and individuals prepare their dogs for the prestigious Mayflower Dog Show in Philadelphia. An intense yuppie couple worries about their Weimaraner, another couple travels with their terrier, a North Carolina dog owner gets ready for the competition, and two men prepare their Shih Tzu.

A young woman and her elderly husband also enter the contest. As the contestants converge on the show, the mockumentary turns their relationships, habits, and ambitions into targets for satire.

Two stars means the film has a recognizable comic premise but does not sustain it. Dog shows provide easy material for satire, and the mockumentary format initially creates opportunities for humorous character observation.

The problems are substantial. The movie is essentially a one-joke comedy that quickly runs out of humor. Its “in your face” camera work and unexplained direct address become oppressively annoying, while the jokes repeatedly return to mocking its characters and using toilet humor. The film pulls its punches as satire and ends up with neither a satisfying comic edge nor an appealing human center.

The film presents a world in which everyone is exposed as superficial, foolish, or morally compromised. Its satire does not distinguish between vice and ordinary human weakness; it places homosexual characters, heterosexual couples, and other social types alike under a mocking gaze. The result is not moral clarity but a broadly misanthropic view of people.

The source review describes the movie as working from an overtly homosexual point of view and as including attacks on heterosexuals, Christianity, faith, and values. That perspective is not offered as a constructive alternative. Instead, the film’s dominant posture is ridicule, with sexual immorality and contempt treated as recurring comic material.

Scripture does warn against joining in scornful company: “nor sits in the seat of scoffers” (Psalm 1:1). The film’s central practice—turning everyone into an object of mockery—stands far from the biblical call to truthful speech, dignity, and love of neighbor.

Best in Show has a promising comic setting but turns satire into sustained contempt. Its sexual material, profanity, blasphemy, and mean-spirited worldview make it a poor choice for families and a bad use of your evening. SKIP IT. For better options, see.