But even within those terms, on the basis of the three "mockumentaries" he has played a key part in -- from 1984's "This Is Spinal Tap" to 1996's "Waiting for Guffman" to the new, and delightful, dog-world comedy "Best in Show" -- Christopher Guest has proved himself to be a breed apart among satirists. His comedies aren't so gentle that they sag; there's always a bit of bite to them. But they're a rarity in that they never sacrifice essential human kindness in a mad elephant stampede for laughs, the way, say, the smug beauty-pageant spoof "Drop Dead Gorgeous" did. Guest pokes fun at ordinary people without poking them full of holes, and it's precisely that approach that keeps his comedies afloat. Meanness comes cheap -- but it's heavy.

Guest co-wrote "Best in Show" with his "Waiting for Guffman" collaborator, SCTV veteran Eugene Levy. "Guffman," the chronicle of a Missouri community-theater group entranced by the idea that their little play might have a shot at Broadway, ambles along so gently that it sometimes loses you along the trail. But Guest and Levy (both of whom also appeared in the film, Guest as the play's clearly gay but closeted director, Levy as a dentist proud of his knack for borscht-belt-style humor) never allow their small-town characters to become objects of our condescension.

The picture walks a fine and shaky line -- it invests everything in its characters without ever being dreadfully heartwarming. If it never quite gels, it's at the very least a triumph of tone over 'tude, a feat that plenty of alleged laugh-a-minute movies are never able to pull off.

But with "Best in Show," Guest and Levy -- who also star, along with a top-flight team including "Guffman" cohorts Catherine O'Hara, Parker Posey and Bob Balaban and Michael McKean of "Spinal Tap" -- finally pull everything together into an agile and effortless entertainment. A parody of the world of purebred dog competitions, where the owners have even more character than their four-legged, button-eyed friends, it's a marvelously accomplished ensemble comedy: Every actor makes an impression, and the picture trots along at a terrier clip.

"Best in Show" follows a ragtag group of dog owners who travel from all over the country, hoping against hope that their pups will take the blue ribbon at the prestigious Mayflower Dog Show.

There's the husband-and-wife team played by Levy and O'Hara (who once again channels her own peculiar brand of comic brilliance from the planet Zontar), with their Norwich terrier, Winky; John Michael Higgins and McKean, an affectionate and outlandishly dressed middle-aged gay couple, with their Shih Tzu, Miss Agnes; ludicrously high-strung lawyers Posey and Michael Hitchcock, with their hyperanxious Weimaraner, Beatrice; loaded-and-stacked trophy wife Jennifer Coolidge and her close pal and top-notch trainer, Jane Lynch, with their standard poodle, Rhapsody in White; and Guest, the gentle-spirited and drawling owner of a North Carolina fly-fishing shop, with his beloved bloodhound, Hubert.

Anyone who has caught snippets of the Westminster Dog Show on TV will see how carefully Guest and his crew have researched the details of dog competition. (Note the badly but cheerfully dressed judges.) Here, though, the dogs may be cute, but it's the people who steal the show.

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