The fourth of Guest’s mockumentaries and this time co-written with Eugene Levy, “A Mighty Wind” looks at a benefit show for folk music after in honor of Irving Steinbloom, the late promoter of folk. The show brings together a trio of long-forgotten folkies.

There’s the Folksmen (played by Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean, the same trio who portrayed Spinal Tap), who tend to beleive deeply in folk and writing 10-minute plus songs about ancient battles. And the New Main Street Singers, a nine-person group based around the religious power of colors and overcoming tough upbringings.

But the highlight of the reunion is bringing back Mitch and Mickey (Levy and Catherine O’Hara), a couple and folk duo that haven’t spoken since thier breakup and Mitch’s subsequent breakdown.

And, as to be expected from Guest, the supporting characters are top-notch. Jennifer Coolidge’s Yoda-sounding and utterly clueless promoter and Ed Begley Jr.’s Swedish, Yiddish-speaking network head are both fabolous, but once again the show belongs to Fred Willard.

Willard is able to top — if possible — his role as Buck Laughlin, the world’s stupidest color commentator, in “Best of Show” with talent agent Mike LaFontaine. The simple phrases “Wha’ Happened!” and “I don’t think so,” delivered as only Willard can, are moments of pure hilarity.

And though the movie is full of plenty of laughs, the moments of seriousness are supremely striking. While Levy’s affectations still make his Mitch character sadly funny, O’Hara plays her Mickey with a seriousness that’s not mocked as in previous films, but rather seen as the proper respect for her craft.

The DVD features speak even more heavily to the respect the entire cast has to the music and the effort the cast put into thier music. With Guest and Levy on the commentary there’s plenty of unscripted humor, just like in the movie, but also a lot of respectful talk of the musical efforts of the cast, especially John Michael Higgins’ arrangements and O’Hara’s singing.

But the musical madness doesn’t end there on the features. There is a whopping 15 additional scenes on the disc as well, most of them featuring practices and performances of each groups material. But the comedy is still intact, including a wonderful press conference featuring a few of the folkies discussing the merits of rap music and its similarities to folk music. While these scenes are great to watch, it’s fairly clear to see how thier inclusion would have disrupted the flow of the movie.

There’s also four faux guest shots of the bands on television which feature the Folksmen trying to go electric in the late 1960s and Mitch and Mickey’s attempt at acting on a cop show.

But no feature better captures the music element better than the unedited broadcast of the benefit concert. The songs are shown in full, the suspense builds around Mitch and Mickey and the work of the actors-turned-musicians is brilliantly showacsed.

For a movie that’s mostly improvised, there is an amazing amount of care and detail in this movie that is detailed in full in the extras.

“A Mighty Wind”: A

DVD features: A,”Matthew T. Olson”

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