For Your Consideration

Christopher Guest is unquestionably today’s leading “mockumentary” filmmaker, having previously directed Waiting for Guffman, Best In Show and A Mighty Wind. Using the same assemblage of comedic actors in each film, Guest is a master at dry humor and can create some hilariously deadpan moments in pure documentary fashion. His latest film, For Your Consideration, drops the “mockumentary” approach and sticks with a straightforward narrative in which we are given a behind-the-scenes look at the film industry. A group of has-been movie stars have come together to make a schmaltzy, Hallmark Hall of Fame-style picture entitled Home for Purim. The film likely would have gone unnoticed, but one of its stars, Marylin Hack (played superbly by Catherine O’Hara), finds out that her performance was mentioned somewhere on the Internet as being Oscar-worthy. This tiny mention of award buzz soon escalates into an unstoppable freight train of phantom hype that gets the mediocre little film promoted by the media to the point of absurdity. For Your Consideration ultimately doesn’t have a whole lot to it, but what makes it so funny is how accurately it portrays the complete shallowness of the glitz and glamour side of Hollywood, and how it is played up with such importance by the media. You’ll laugh throughout the whole film and then come away thinking “Well, that’s pretty much how it really is.”

Directed by Christopher Guest.
Written by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy.
Starring Catherine O’Hara, Harry Shearer, Parker Posey, Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, John Michael Higgins, Ed Begley, Jr., Jennifer Coolidge, Bob Balaban, Michael McKean, Ricky Gervais, Jane Lynch and Fred Willard.

Rated PG-13 for sexual references and brief language. 86 min.

***½ so says The Fish