Review

Cowriters Guest and Levy reemerge with another mockumentary, A Mighty Wind, a riotous cornball caricature of the mid-'60s folk movement. Balaban plays producer Jonathan Steinbloom, a worry-wart perfectionist hastily organizing a folk reunion concert in homage to his late father, folk music impresario Irving Steinbloom. The bill features three reformed folk bands: The Folksmen (Shearer, McKean and Guest as a cracker-barrel trio plucking shanty rhythms with barnyard choruses); The New Main Street Singers, a smiling, commercial, nine-piece combo of white-bread lads and lasses; and finally Mitch & Mickey, poster children-lovers reunited. Levy plays the emotionally stunted Mitch, O'Hara the fragile peacenik-past-her-expiration-date. Then there's Willard as the Main Street Singers' manager, once more the tactless jackass doubled-over at his own jokes; and Begley as a public broadcasting mogul, freely dropping Yiddish into his enthusiastic rants. With only two weeks to prepare, the groups pull-off the event, despite in-fighting and last-minute fiascos. It is these "uncomfortable" moments emerging from an otherwise deadpan delivery where laughter becomes the stop-gap. Much like the best Coen brothers works, Guest and Levy have a knack for presenting unconventional character types recognizable to all. Yet they take things several notches further, disarming us with dollops of pure absurdity and leaving us in utter stitches.