Like Inside Llewyn Davis, Christopher Guest’s mockumentary has a great deal of affection for the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s, as well as a frequent willingness to laugh at its starchy earnestness. The death of a folk producer named Irving Steinbloom prompts a memorial concert involving reunions of his (faux) folk acts: The Folksmen (an apparent nod to the Kingston Trio), the choral group The New Main Street Singers (the original Main Street singers being long gone), and now-divorced duo Mitch & Mickey.
As usual in a Guest movie (see: This Is Spinal Tap), the music parodies are spot-on; you can admire their instrumental and vocal virtuosity while snickering at their lyrical naivete and lack of self-awareness. Still, there’s something sweet and sad about that naivete, which would be steamrollered by the massive musical/cultural/social changes of the 1960s, from which the characters are still reeling, nearly four decades later.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVh0Iq_85aw]