For Your Consideration
2 Stars
Directed by: Christopher Guest
Starring: Catherine O'Hara, Harry Shearer, Jennifer Coolidge, Eugene Levy
Rated PG-13
"It's about time nothing happened in a film," says actor Don Lake in the Hollywood satire For Your Consideration. Unfortunately, director and writer Christopher Guest seems to have borrowed this utterance as the philosophy for his latest effort. Co-written by Eugene Levy, the film follows the creation of the fictional movie Home for Purim and the Oscar buzz that sends its cast and crew into a tizzy.
Consideration is quite a departure from previous Guest vehicles such as Best in Show and A Mighty Wind; it is not a mockumentary, and the camera angles and techniques have gone disappointingly mainstream. The usual actors are in place: Catherine O'Hara, Harry Shearer, Parker Posey, Jennifer Coolidge, John Michael Higgins, Guest, Levy, and company all make appearances. However, even the presence of these comedic geniuses cannot turn around a boring and inconclusive script.
Furthermore, the script seems lost and misguided. Distracting cameos by stars such as Sandra Oh and John Krasinski exist solely to proclaim, "Look how many famous people are in this film!" And Catherine O'Hara's character is puzzling and not fully developed. At first, she is a humble and homely forgotten actress, but later, she becomes a fully plastic Hollywood diva with no heart and no brain. Guest and Levy definitely mean to poke fun at the Hollywood industry, but bits like this are too stereotypical and too shallow to be effective.
Rare gems in the film include Jane Lynch and the obnoxiously funny Fred Willard as two Access Hollywood-type celebrity reporters, and the always-strong Levy, Guest, and Higgins provide a few chuckles. On the whole, For Your Consideration is a misguided and futile attempt at comedy; save your money and watch some Guest classics instead.
