I want to override the __getattr__ method on a class to do something fancy but I don't want to break the default behavior.

What's the correct way to do this?

Overriding __getattr__ should be fine -- __getattr__ is only called as a last resort i.e. if there are no attributes in the instance that match the name. For instance, if you access foo.bar, then __getattr__ will only be called if foo has no attribute called bar. If the attribute is one you don't want to handle, raise AttributeError:

class Foo(object):
    def __getattr__(self, name):
        if some_predicate(name):
            # ...
        else:
            # Default behaviour
            raise AttributeError

However, unlike __getattr__, __getattribute__ will be called first (only works for new style classes i.e. those that inherit from object). In this case, you can preserve default behaviour like so:

class Foo(object):
    def __getattribute__(self, name):
        if some_predicate(name):
            # ...
        else:
            # Default behaviour
            return object.__getattribute__(self, name)

See the Python docs for more.