TOP TEN TUESDAY: Best Mockumentaries

Since I am in the process of making one of the greatest Mockumentaries ever, I thought it would also be a good idea to show everyone some of the other great ones. The list below is some required watching before you decide to make your own Mockumentary.

10. Man Bites Dog

This mockumentary consistently falls under people’s radar, despite being released on Criterion DVD. Then again, that can be said for many deserving films on Criterion. This French faux documentary is a little disturbing and has a dark comedy after bite, but is played mostly to invoke the sense that it’s really true. The story has a camera crew following a serial killer and documenting his way of life. The crew must cope with witnessing his acts of theft, rape and murder without getting involved and spoiling the purity of their documentary.

09. CB4

This is the hip hop/rap equivalent to Spinal Tap, in which it follows 3 up and coming rappers as they start to hit fame and fortune. The group is a parody of the famous rap group N.W.A., and a few other gangsta rap groups. CB4 stands for Cell Block 4 who become the hottest rap group with songs like “Sweat From My Balls” and “Straight Outta Locash”.

Chris Rock stars in this movie as MC Gusto, he also wrote the story and screenplay for the film. This also helped land cameos from Ice Cube, Ice T, Shaquille Oneal, Halle Berry, Flavor Flav,   Eazy-E, and The Butthole Surfers(huh?).

08. The Grand

This phony documentary takes the insanely popular “sport” of professional poker and pokes jabs at it’s popularity on all levels, but does so with a more subtle touch than your typical mockumentary. The characters are ridiculous but believable and the the movie still manages to maintain that unique suspense that comes with watching a good round of poker while still being funny as Hell.

07. A Mighty Wind

Christopher Guest’s third in his string of mockumentaries tackles the world of folk music, documenting a group of retired folk singers and musicians that come together for one big Woodstock-style folk music reunion concert. Despite most of these characters being pathetic relics of the past, Guest and his regular crew of comedic geniuses still manage to instill a sense of empathy and likability in the characters. Even the music is kind of catchy, although I wouldn’t go driving around listening to it in my car with my sound system blasting.

06. [rec]

This Spanish film is the absolute best the genre of “first-person-shot-horror” has to offer.   The idea of being trapped in an apartment complex with a bunch of raging zombies is terrifying enough.   Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza, the directors behind ‘[REC]’, put their audience squarely in the middle of all the action, throwing scare after scare at the camera.   This is scary stuff right here.   In fact, the final 10 minutes of the film are among some of scariest moments I’ve seen in recent memory.

‘[REC]’ was remade last year for American audiences as ‘Quarantine,’ and, if you just have to see an Americanized version of the film, you can do worse than this remake.   It is essentially a shot-for-shot remake of the original film, but it offers just as many thrills, as well.

For a full Movie Melting Pot on ‘[REC]’, check this out!

05. Fubar

I know what you are saying ‘Fubar’, I have never even heard of that mockumentary. Well sir, you are missing out and need to jump on Amazon to snag a copy of this movie. My buddy Mike introduced me to this movie called ‘Fubar’, a Canadian Mockumentary that he makes all of his new employees watch as a rite of passage. The even funnier part is that they ordered this movie and received it 2 years later! He was explaining the premise to me and it sounded like the worst movie in the history of bad movies. He put the dvd in and immediately starting laughing before it even started playing, pretty weird.

What I found after watching about 4 minutes of the movie is an utterly ridiculous story of two aging headbangers Terry and Dean(pictured above). These guys do nothing but drink beer, play foot hockey, and grow “hockey hair† aka mullets and beat the hell out of each other and anything they come in contact with..including Tron.

04. Best In Show

If you like absurdist comedy and you like dogs, then you have no excuse for having not seen this movie. As Christopher Guest’s second foray into the relatively young genre of mockumentary filmmaking (at the time) this movie is brilliant comedy. Stereotypes galore, a stellar cast of mostly improvised dialogue and tons of great dogs to boot. The situational comedy and comedic timing in this movie are spot on and in my opinion, this is his best of the four mockumentaries so far from Guest.

03. Borat

Borat is a fictions character from the Sacha Baron Cohen TV Show ‘Da Ali G Show’. The full title of the movie is ‘Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan’, but as you can see its much easier to just say ‘Borat’.

This is a different style Mockumentary because there are only a couple of actors in the film, the rest are real people he is interacting with and essentially making look ridiculous. This is the most recent super succesful Mockumentary film, but its look like his next character movie called ‘Bruno’ will surpass the success of ‘Borat’.

Borat is supposed to be from Kazakhstan, and he is making his way through America filming how we do things so he can go back and attempt to improve the Kazakhstan culture. This movie probably also holds the record for most lawsuits filed from its filming because everyone that ended up looking like a moron wanted to sue them even though they signed release forms.

02. Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project is the highest grossing indie film of all time, and has the highest ratio of profit to cost ever. After premiering at Sundance in 1999 it saw a wide release that summer. It grossed nearly 250 million worldwide, as opposed to only costing 35,000 to make.   The film was almost entirely improvised and was shot in 8 days, giving them almost 19 hours of footage to edit.   Since the movie was supposed to look as real as possible each day the directors would give each actor an outline of what needed to accomplish for that day, and at night they would purposely freak them out as if it was really happening.

This is probably the least Mockumentary style film on the list, but it was shot like a dockumentary and the characters and events are fake thus we have one of the most successful Mockumentaries of all time.

01. This is Spinal Tap

‘This is Spinal Tap’ is not just a cult classic, but a cultural icon of a movie. This mockumentary is about a fictional 80’s glam rock hair metal band called Spinal Tap. Rob Reiner created and stars in the doc as the film maker, so essentially he is just playing himself, playing himself..does that make sense? This movie helped launch Christopher Guest into another mockumentary film maker who is responsible for films like ‘Best in Show’, ‘A Mighty Wind’, and ‘Waiting for Guffman’.

This movie still stands the test of time, and its the epitomy of how to make a Mockumentary. Not only did they make the movie, but they also released 2 albums, and coined the term “Turn it up to 11”..if I could only be so lucky.