For Your Consideration

source: For Your Consideration

This was rated a mere 1 based on sheer disappointment. I love all of Guest's movies but something happened or I should say didn't happen here. The movie was over before it stated with a running time of slightly over an hour and it appeared as though Guest just plain gave up and quit so the studio called in a editor to finish the project. Here we have one of Hollywood's most consistent and greatest ensemble cast and it is wasted on the scale of "The Thin Red Line". To top it off we have many many more faces everyone will recognize, too many. You just didn't care about any of them. The only saving grace was the take on Inside Edtion with the magnificent Judy Lynch and the clueless Fred Willard. But these were not scenes but bytes. The whole movie bytes. Go see "Stranger Than Fiction" and see a real movie. Just to write this makes me sad, I so loved all the other movies Guest and company have done. As Willard's character kept saying in the "Mighty Wind": "What happened???????????"

WAITING FOR GUFFMAN is my favorite movie of all time, so any new project from Christopher Guest has very big shoes to fill. But this one is so busy being pleased with itself that it doesn't even try. It starts very, very well indeed. In fact, there were times that it seemed as if the script were being written with me in mind as viewer and the heck with everybody else. But then it starts to go off the tracks. The centerpiece here is the filming of an independent film called HOME FOR PURIM about a Jewish family in the American South in the 1940's. The premise for the film within the film has struck some reviewers as preposterous, but let's remember that this month a major studio released a romantic comedy starring Russell Crowe so we're assured that stupidity is the one thing that there's a limitless supply of. The scenes from HOME FOR PURIM that we see are wretched (strike one) but somehow buzz arises on the internet that the film is Oscar worthy. Incredibly enough the majority of characters in the story are clueless about what the internet is or how it operates even though the story seemingly takes place in 2006 (strike two). The buzz builds to the point where the Evil Studio Executives take over the film and decide to "tone down" the Jewishness and it becomes HOME FOR THANKSGIVING, thus robbing the film of what little subtext it had. MAJOR SPOILER ALERT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Nobody connected with HOME FOR THANKSGIVING gets nominated for anything. And it's here that the screenplay turns, for want of a better word, nasty. There's a bitterness in the final scenes that just left a bad taste in my mouth. This is the kind of movie that comes out every once in a while that seems to have been made for a specific purpose- to assure the people who stayed on the farm in Nebraska or wherever that they didn't miss a thing by not having moved to Los Angeles. It tells us that there are people in Hollywhood who have big egos and are deceitful. Oh my God, no! I never dreamed such a thing. Next thing I know the National Geographic will tell me the world is round, or maybe Popular Science will tell me water is wet. I would say that I'm very forgiving and will be there opening weekend for Guest and company's next movie. But at the showing I went to there were a grand total of five people in the audience counting myself. Maybe the buzz has gotten out on this one and it's not good. Despite what the movie presents, pretty much everyone in America over the age of eight does know how to use the internet.

Christopher Guest has quite the resume and reputation for his quirky, awkward satirical mockumentaries, but "For Your Consideration" simply doesn't measure up with the rest. It's hard not to judge "Consideration" by its predecessors such as "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind." With the same cast, the same satirical (though not full out mockumentary) style, it simply asks for that and it doesn't succeed the way those movies do. The premise of "Consideration" is on the set of a movie (a ridiculous) movie and the overblown Oscar hype that the film gets. The film contains everyone from the actors to the producer in the cast, as well as a couple Hollywood-focused TV show hosts. The characters are still quirky and amusing in a subtle way, yet something is off. Their depth and the interest in what is happening to them is non-existent and it makes it harder to laugh at the them in the long run and considering characters tend to drive Guest's films, that makes it tough from the get-go. The plot is simply not as intriguing as well. This perhaps lies in the fact that the focus is not on something obscure like dog shows or traveling folk musicians, but instead on basic Hollywood, which offers less genuine interest in subject alone. Compound that with the weak characters and you have a huge Guest disappointment.

"Waiting for Guffman" was a little bit of genius. "Best in Show" and "Mighty Wind" expanded on the same concept: focusing on a sub-culture of people who take their little world entirely too seriously. Unfortunately, "For Your Consideration" lacks the subtle satire of Guest's recent efforts. The beauty of the previous films was the bubble-world of the cast. The assumption of the viewer is, outside this microcosm, exists the "real world." That illusion is broken in "Consideration," with its all-too-broad send up of "Entertainment Tonight," "Wake Up L.A." and similar shows. It would have been funnier if the Oscar buzz was a complete construct WITHIN the set of "Purim", and then later, the realization there was no Oscar buzz at all. The humor wasn't as sharp as previous efforts. For example, the handful of characters that were unfamiliar with the internet ... that didn't ring true. Worst of all, there's a cruelty toward the characters in "For Your Consideration" that didn't sit well with me. All in all, a disappointment.

I'm one of Christopher Guest's biggest fans, having LOVED Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind, Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman...but the things that made each of those movies so wonderful -- quirky characters sharing their lives with the camera -- seem to be absent here. The cast of Home for Purim, the film within the film, is not very good. They're not supposed to be. The story is melodramatic and the actors find themselves believing themselves to be better than they are. Unfortunately for us, the characters just aren't fun to watch. It's something like Lisa Kudrow's short-lived show, The Comeback. You watch several characters over-hype themselves with over-expectations and it's just an unfortunate train wreck. That being said, the actors in FYC are terrific. Each one brings their character home. The story told is also possibly a story worth telling, but it has too much of the "Oh." panache from the British version of The Office and not enough of the laugh-out-loud moments. I can't wait to see Mr. Guest's future films (not to mention look up some of his back catalog!), as well as each of the great cast: Catherine O'Hara, Parker Posey, Eugene Levy, Harry Shearer, and everyone else. I just wish that this film made me laugh more.

I'm also surprised by some of the negative commentary around 'For your Consideration'. The satire seemed to me to be to be quite precise - particularly in its analysis of the average actor's life - which is a lot more like "For Your Consideration" or Ricky Gervais's brilliant "The Extras" than anything you're likely to see on Entertainment Tonight that is for sure. Having studied method acting over several years (a long time ago), and having worked as an extra at different low points in my life (never ever again), I have to say that I laughed till I cried. Without giving the ending away,Marilyn Hacke's closing scene is so on the money - what a cracker! Acting, actor training and film are all open to exploitation of the gullible because so many people are desperate to be part of it; consequently it's an area ripe for satire. For me, this was more on the money than "Waiting for Guffman" although I enjoyed that too. For your consideration has sharper edges. I think it's great that Ricky Gervais performs in this film. Gervaise is such an 'English' comic whilst Guest's sensibilities are very American - but in the shared fascination with human idiosyncracies, banalities and foibles, they both create a very contemporary form of the comedy of manners.

I'm a gigantic "Waiting for Guffman" fan. I also really liked "Best In Show." I thought "A Mighty Wind," while not great, was creative and tender. I saw "For Your Consideration" today and while there were funny moments peppered throughout, the film comes off as half-baked. I sat there until the last credit rolled trying to like this film, and couldn't. I appreciate that so many actors have joined up with Guest to be in his movies, but there are now so many Guest "regulars" that there is barely any character development. "A Mighty Wind" tried to remedy this by giving each character one big quirk. "Consideration" seems to use this tactic sparingly... both a blessing and a curse. What I miss is the intimacy of "Guffman," where we got to know 5-6 characters very well. "Consideration" comes off less as an ensemble cast, and more as a long string of cameos. Catherine O'Hara gives a brilliant, nuanced performance~ I wish we had gotten to know more about her character. *Definitely spoilers here!* As other reviewers have pointed out, "Consideration" has a very similar ending to "Guffman." But whereas the ending of "Guffman" is somewhat bemusing (Corky talking about his shop), I thought the ending of "Consideration" was cruel, predictable, and saddening.

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. In an impressive string of wonderful mockumentary farces over the past few years, guiding lights Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, and their brilliant comedic acting ensemble, have joyfully savaged the self-important cultural "worlds" of small town amateur theater ("Waiting for Guffman"), dog shows ("Best in Show") and folk music ("A Mighty Wind"). But a winning formula can't go on forever unchanged, nor should we expect it to. Inevitably, the group have hit a bump in the road with their latest film, "For Your Consideration," a send-up of Hollywood movie making and the assorted vanities of movie makers. Not that it's bad. But compared to those earlier works, it isn't inspired; it doesn't grab you with its efforts to lampoon; and the performances of the actors - always uniformly of a high caliber in most of their movies – is highly variable in this new movie. Perhaps the theme hits too close to home: it's hard to gain the distance necessary to properly ridicule your own ethos, your own cultural world. Or maybe it's just that the recipe Guest and Levy have used to such delightful advantage has just gotten old, for viewers and for Guest's company. The plot, for what it's worth, concerns a film within a film: the making of a new movie, the ethnically freighted "Home for Purim," which is later rewritten and retitled "Home for Thanksgiving" to broaden its commercial box office appeal. All the stereotypes one expects are on hand: the avaricious executive producers; the harried director; the screenwriters, pained by the incremental decimation of their work; the aging stars in decline; the young up and comings; the vain chase after that holiest of grails: an Oscar, the hangers on – the parasitic, disingenuous talent agent, talk show hosts, film critics and entertainment reporters. They're all here. Parker Posey (young actress possibly on the way up), Catherine O'Hara ((veteran actress on the way out), Jennifer Coolidge (ditzy producer), and Eugene Levy (actors' agent) provide decent turns but none of these superb talents gives a truly inspired performance here. Harry Shearer is better as a long-suffering actor who is glad enough just to star in a feature film after years of making commercials, Oscar or no Oscar. But the comedic scene stealers in this movie are three pairs of actors who play off each other to wonderful effect: Fred Willard and Jane Lynch as a TV entertainment reporting duo, Bob Balaban and Michael McKean as the beleaguered screenwriters, and Don Lake and Michael Hitchcock as Siskel-Ebert style TV critics. There are several competent cameo contributors as well, the best of whom is Carrie Aizley, a movie journalist. This is decent fare, but I think Guest and Levy need to re-imagine their formula for successful farce. I never thought the day would come when I would regard a comedy written by David Mamet as superior to work by Guest & Levy, but here's a tip: if you want to see a good send-up of movie making, try Mamet's 2000 film, "State and Main." My grades: 6.5/10 (low B) (Seen on 11/15/06)

I'm surprised by the number of negative reviews here for what I thought was in many ways Christopher Guest's most developed movie yet. Granted, you either like his movies or not, but as someone who loved Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and Mighty Wind equally, I was in no way disappointed by For Your Consideration. Maybe some of the humor here is easier to appreciate if you're Jewish, but that can't account for more than 5% of the jokes, and all of the actors were great. Particular kudos to O'Hara (as usual), Shearer, Lynch and Posey. The ET/Charlie Rose/Ebert & Roeper spoofs were hilarious and dead-on. The ending of the movie was truer than that of his previous films, and the ever expanding cast of Guest players made the viewing experience more fun than in the past (Sandra Oh, Ricky Gervais etc.). My theory is that it's hard to approach a new Christopher Guest movie without justifiably expecting a lot, and great expectations often lead to disappointment. I was anxious to see For Your Consideration, but found it to be rewarding, very funny, and a little more poignant than usual (a good thing). Give it a chance and it'll grow on you.