We were told to go to some other movie by one of the kids—“You have to see it!”—and so, like obedient parents, we shuffled off to the local cinema with its twenty-four screens and ten-deep lineups. Perhaps the line went on too long. Whatever— when I finally got to the window I’d forgotten the title we just had to see and said, “Two for Best of Show, please.” It was a happy screw-up. Best of Show is about a New York dog competition, a movie about eccentric breeders and posh kennel clubs and strange-looking animals and their equally strange-looking handlers. It is fiction but intended to feel like a documentary—and it is hilarious. Fred Willard plays a colour analyst called “Buck” Laughlin, and when he isn’t going on about his proctologist he’s making the most wildly inappropriate comments, such as, “I went to one of those obedience places once—it was all going well until they spilled hot candle wax on my private parts!” But it wasn’t anything Buck said that sent me spinning back in time.
