Last weekend I had to run over to the local university. As I made my way to the auditorium where I was supposed to be, I passed by what appeared to be a tap dancing competition for young teenage girls. As I quickly passed by, my coffee in hand, I couldn’t help but slow down, take a sip of my drink, and stare in disbelief for a moment at the spectacle before me. I couldn’t figure out who looked stranger, the young girls with their overblown, curly hair and glittery, gaudy outfits or their mothers who were dressed almost exactly the same. I couldn’t tell who was more excited, the competitors or their parents! From the inside, this may seem normal to the participants, but from the outside, it looked like something from another world.

Watching Best in Show is exactly that kind of experience. This 90-minute non-stop laugh riot chronicles the lives of dog show participants as they prepare for a big event. The personalities of the owners are as diverse as the breeds of dogs that enter these contests. In this case, they’re all gearing up for the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show -- a prestigious event held annually in Philadelphia.

Director Christopher Guest (who also co-wrote this along with actor Eugene Levy) films Best in Show in a documentary style that works ideally with deadpan delivery of lines that most of the fine actors here use. Its tongue-in-cheek tone is the ideal form of mockery that something like this needs. It’s similar to the great Australian film Strictly Ballroom that took on the world of ballroom dance competition and to This is Spinal Tap, which was directed by Rob Reiner and co-written by Rob Reiner, Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, and Christopher Guest (Guest, Shearer, and McKean starred in This is Spinal Tap, and McKean is in Best in Show).

And just like my experience at the university, I don’t know if the insiders of this dog show world will see the humor in what they do, but I certainly did. This movie is hilarious. Within the first two minutes, I had to hit the "pause" key so I could finish laughing when Parker Posey matter-of-factly described to her therapist a sexual position she calls "the congress of the cow." The position wasn’t the problem; in fact it is something she further describes as emotionally satisfying for her. The problem was that when her and her husband were performing the "congress," her dog walked into the room and saw them -- this, they thought, would surely traumatize the dog and ruin its chances for winning and that’s why they were all in therapy together.

This is a fairly low-budget film, so the production values are quite modest. Still, the picture quality is very good with excellent vibrancy and detail. This is not a spectacular film like Gladiator or Quills, but on its own terms, it is very good. As for the sound, what’s most important here is that they made sure the dialogue was clear and easy to hear -- and that’s important because you really need to hear everything that’s said to get the most out of Best in Show.

DVD extras are surprisingly plentiful. There is commentary from the director and actor/writer Eugene Levy that provides plenty of good insight. And as usual, what I liked most about this DVD were the "Deleted Scenes." Unlike on some DVDs where you could understand why a scene wasn’t used, all of these scenes are quite good and could have been used in the movie. For the most part, they expand each of the characters prior to the climax at the big show. I suspect that these scenes were eliminated in order to keep the movie tighter and moving along faster -- which it does. Given the fact that I laughed almost non-stop and didn’t once take a break from watching, I would say the filmmakers were correct to do so.