Delayed Reaction: Mascots

The Pitch: Best in Show for the mascot world.

The only note I made while watching this was "An empty calories version of Christopher Guest". That's all that needs to be said. The humor is very familiar. A lot of guided improvisation with a bunch of actors who do it well. Guest has no trouble putting together a strong cast of his regulars, like Jane Lynch, Parker Posey, Fred Willard, Ed Begley Jr., Jennifer Coolidge, etc. and adding capable newcomers like Zach Woods, Chris O'Dowd*, and Sarah Baker. There's a couple good laughs, but this is mostly going through the motions.

*Oh yeah, O'Dowd was on Guest's HBO show Family Tree, so even he's not new to that repritory cast.

I'll admit, I think I have a bias against these Netflix released movies. There's a reason why their best film so far (Beast of No Nation) was from a director that no one outside of True Detective fans had heard of. It's not like Martin Scorsese is bringing his next opus to Netflix. The established filmmakers who are willing to have their work distributed by Netflix (Adam Sandler, Ricky Gervais, Christopher Guest) are not bringing their A-game when they are still getting paid upfront for a B-. If that's not actually how it's working with Netflix, Mascots isn't convincing me of that.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend