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Printer-Friendly ModeGuest tackles familiar territory with little success
December 4, 2006 —
It's been over three years - you know what that means. That's right, it's time for yet another Christopher Guest film.
Every few years, Guest returns with a new offbeat film, and the name of this year's film is For Your Consideration. The title of the movie didn't make sense to me until approximately 10 seconds after typing the first sentence of this very review. In a few moments, it should be clear to everyone what the title is referencing.
For his fourth stint in the director's chair, Guest takes on Hollywood and the (not-so) glamorous lives of veteran actors and rising stars. (It should be noted here, to avoid any nitpicking from Vanguard readers, that Guest did not direct This is Spinal Tap, and while he did direct Almost Heroes and a movie called The Big Picture, those two do not count).
For Your Consideration is not entirely different from the previous three Guest movies, Waiting for Guffman, Best In Show, and A Mighty Wind. The cast is nearly identical, with everyone from Richard Kind to Michael McKean returning for whatever roles they can grab (Kind appears in one brief scene) and Catherine O'Hara showing up again in the starring role.
The most noticeable difference this time is the slightly altered format that the movie follows. It's not so much mockumentary as a straight narrative. Gone are the funny interviews that drove the previous Guest films. And they are sorely missed.
Instead of the faux interviews, viewers are treated (and I use that term loosely) to overly long scenes from the movie within the movie, Home for Purim. See, For Your Consideration is a movie about a movie with actors portraying actors, and Home for Purim is the movie being filmed in the movie. Good gravy, that sounds way more confusing than it should.
Anyways, the movie reaches a point where an awfully big fuss is raised by all of the actors in the movie once rumors of Academy Awards begin to spread across the set of Home of Purim - hence the title of the movie. Well, not the title of Home for Purim, the title of the real movie, For Your Consideration.
What all of this amounts to is roughly ninety minutes of nothing we haven't seen before - same actors, same subtle, nearly absent humor, same Fred Willard providing the same overblown performance.
This was funny in 2003 when A Mighty Wind hit theaters. It's not so funny now. Maybe this film needed more goofy songs or a catch phrase like "Wha' happened?"
But even though it's not a laugh riot, that doesn't mean that For Your Consideration is not worth watching. There are moments that make the movie rather enjoyable, even if it does end up just a footnote on Christopher Guest's resume.
For the most part, these moments depend on who is on screen. As much as I love Home Alone, I will readily admit that I don't really care for Catherine O'Hara, and her being the central character here is a big turn-off for me. I would have gladly taken more Harry Shearer, who is entertaining in his expressions alone and doesn't even need to speak to make a scene worth watching.
But I'll take the moderate amount of Harry Shearer and settle for the overabundance of Catherine O'Hara in this average film from a great director.
Considering that Guest has made the same movie four times over about topics that range from theatre actors to folk singers to Hollywood actors, maybe it's time he switch things up a bit.
Best in Show was a nice project that veered away from the entertainment industry, instead focusing on show dogs, and in the future Guest would be wise to try his hand at making another movie that doesn't involve actors or musicians. Maybe something with fancy cats is in the works.