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FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
Directed by: Christopher Guest.
Produced by: Karen Murphy.
Written by: Guest & Eugene Levy.
Director of Photography: Roberto Schaefer.
Edited by: Robert Leighton.
Music by: CJ Vanston.
Released by: Warner Independent.
Country of Origin: US. 86 min. Rated: PG-13.
With: Bob Balaban, Ed Begley, Jr., Jennifer Coolidge, Paul Dooley, Ricky Gervais, Christopher Guest, John Michael Higgins, Eugene Levy, Jane Lynch, Michael McKean, Larry Miller, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, Harry Shearer, & Fred Willard.

Some consider Christopher Guest’s best film to be 1989’s lesser known The Big Picture, and for others it’s1997’s Waiting for Guffman, but I doubt many will see For Your Consideration and feel the same way. Essentially, the comedies are all about the same thing: the entertainment business and how actors can be shallow, deceptive, and often laughably stupid. And while variations on a theme can be a career-long novelty for some writer/directors, there are only so many times you can see an ironic actor portraying a stupid actor before you feel like you’ve seen it before. Twice.

Which is interesting because this is the first film Guest and writing co-conspirator Eugene Levy have made in years that isn’t done in their all-too-familiar mock-documentary style. It’s a traditional satire about a cast of unknown actors who star in a melodramatic indie period piece called Home for Purim, a Jewish family drama set in the 1920’s South with a mother dying of cancer and a lesbian daughter returning home for the High Holy Days for the first time in 10 years. When Marilyn Hack (Catherine O’Hara) is told that an anonymous blogger has posted a message that her performance is worthy of an Academy Award (before the filming is even completed, mind you), she takes it to heart and tells the rest of the cast. As the rumor that Hack will be nominated picks up speed, buzz starts to swirl around fellow cast members Victor Allan Miller (Harry Shearer) and Callie Webb (Parker Posey). That’s when the deterioration of humanity begins to set in as each actor grapples with elation, disappointment, and shameless publicity stunts.

While it sounds hilarious on paper that Guest is orchestrating his usual ensemble (plus Ricky Gervais as studio head Martin Gibb) in a film about a film, it isn’t as satisfying onscreen. Consideration’s tone closely matches A Mighty Wind, which is often considered by critics to be one of Guest’s most detached and haphazard films. Where earlier films treated its subjects with an awkward affection, pity, and shared amusement, Wind had more mockery than commiseration, which is why Consideration fits as his next project. Rather than connecting to the characters in their moments of shameful self-analysis caught on camera, we find Marilyn Hack and Callie Webb acting like fools all of the time without reflective recourse. And the premise – that industry folk are so insipid about technology that no one would recognize that a common filmgoer posting an opinion might not be a credible Oscar informant – is distractingly ridiculous.

On the plus side, the mainstays are as hilarious as ever. Jennifer Coolidge’s character, producer Whitney Taylor Brown, is wheeled around the set in a tall red leather wheelchair and provides enough one-liners to rival her work in previous Guest films. (“Someone’s killed their children and turned them into cakes. And I want to see that.”) Jane Lynch and Fred Willard play bickering co-hosts of Hollywood Now, a biting parody of Entertainment Tonight, and their segments might just be the high points of the film. Zachary Jones
November 17, 2006