Waiting for Guffman

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A madcap gem.

LA Weekly F. X. Feeney

Yet Waiting for Guffman is never mean-spirited. Its weird warmth is perfectly embodied by Guest himself, whose flamboyant, stagestruck choreographer, Corky St. Clair, could have (in less ingenious hands) been a cruel, gay-bashing caricature, but instead becomes a hallucinatory Everyman.

Newsweek David Ansen

The movie is, from start to finish, a hoot... Both a savvy satire of smalltown boosterism and an affectionate salute to the performing spirit. [10 Feb 1987, p.66]

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Thirty minutes into Waiting for Guffman, my stomach hurt from laughing.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

I lost it just watching Corky show off such memorabilia as "My Dinner With Andre" action figures and a "Remains of the Day" lunch box. Priceless.

USA Today Susan Wloszczyna

The nonstop amusing mockumentary Waiting for Guffman does to small-town acting troupes what "This Is Spinal Tap did to heavy-metal bands."

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A sly and gleeful comedy showcase that pokes clever fun at the American musical, amateur theatricals and anything else that's not nailed down.

Film Threat Ron Wells

I saw this movie in a room full of San Francisco movie critics, and I haven't heard that much laughter since, well, the piano duet in "Island of Dr. Moreau" (which you must admit, was pretty funny.)

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

The don't quite do for "Oklahoma!" what they did for heavy metal, but they come close. [31 Jan 1997, p.C6]

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie doesn't bludgeon us with gags. It proceeds with a certain comic relentlessness from setup to payoff, and its deliberation is part of the fun.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

A very funny, very unusual ensemble comedy that falls somewhere between slapdash and brilliant, an improvised comedy with more hits than misses. It's also an oddly touching tribute to the joys of show biz.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The humor is uneven and sometimes crude, but much of the mock-documentary is surprising and amusing.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Guest's boldest move is to present the revue in its entirety. It's as if Mel Brooks had shown the complete "Springtime for Hitler,'' the play within his 1968 movie, "The Producers.''

Dallas Observer Peter Rainer

Such a funny mess that it keeps you laughing even when you realize it's not much better directed than a cable-access talk show.

San Francisco Examiner Craig Marine

Nowhere near as funny as "Spinal Tap," but fans of this kind of deadpan humor are guaranteed to get a few chuckles out of this one. All of the actors are marvelously horrible, and in this movie, bad equals good.

Variety Daniel M. Kimmel

The enterprise comes across like a bunch of talented friends making an elaborate home movie for their own amusement.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Feels like an overlong "SCTV" skit. Many prime gags are recycled throughout the film, and, honestly, there's only so much Eugene Levy schtick one can take (though he does get the best Yiddish lines in the film).

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The result isn't very funny: There are clever bits, sure, but they're embedded in long, painfully obvious sequences built around one-shot gags.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

May be amusing if you feel a pressing need to feel superior to somebody, but the aim is too broad and scattershot to add up to much beyond an acknowledgment of small-town desperation--something Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis did much better back in the 20s and 30s.