Rating of
2/4
Seriously consider not seeing this
goodfellamike - wrote on 10/26/08
For Your Consideration is a boring, vein and mostly unwatchable satire; it’s a big step down from A Mighty Wind (Christopher Guest’s previous cinematic venture), perhaps because his style has changed. Up until now, his films have taken a sort of mocumentary approach, but for this flick he has opted to tell it straight.
The best that can be said about the movie is nearly all of his regular group of improv actors appear somewhere in the movie: Morley Orfkin (Eugene Levy) is a terrible agent to actor, Victor Allen Miller (Harry Shearer) and is constantly advising his client to appear in bad infomercials or fast food commercials. Miller’s latest film project, Home for Purim, also stars Callie Webb (Parker Posey), Brian Chubb (Christopher Moynihan), and Marilyn Hack (Catherine O’Hara). Home for Purim is an over-the-top turkey about a Jewish family getting together before the matriarch of the family dies from a terrible disease. Also working on the film is the daft publicist (John Michael Higgins), the thankless screenwriters (Michael McKean and Bob Balaban), the feminine make-up artist (Ed Begley Jr.), the clueless producer (Jennifer Coolidge) and the schlubby director (Christopher Guest). Added to the mix are the film’s studio head (Ricky Gervais), his right-hand man (Larry Miller) and a pair of television hosts (Fred Willard and Jane Lynch) whose program is an accurate send-up of Entertainment Tonight. The plot of the movie revolves around the making of Home for Purim and the subsequent Oscar buzz that builds after one of the stars of the show is mentioned as a possible Academy Award nominee.
The first problem with For Your Consideration is how ridiculous Home for Purim comes across. It’s not even humorous that a film so melodramatic and sappy could be Oscar-nominated, let alone the egregious performances. I understand that this is just a movie, but it wasn’t even amusing. The second problem is that the laughs are so few and far between in a script that feels like it was written over a boring weekend trapped inside by the rain. The third problem is the uneven performances. The best moments come from Higgins (who has never used the internet before) and Coolidge (who plays stupid like a work of art), and at times even their performances feel uncertain. Willard has a funny haircut, but it’s hard to believe how cruel his television tactics are. One can admire how hard Shearer and O’Hara try, but I felt they were just embarrassed, particularly O’Hara in her final few scenes where her character gets botox injections and comes off looking scary and senile; just about everyone else is thankless.
Guest is a talented entertainer, but his attempts at comedy felt less than half-hearted. These are mostly characters no one in their right mind would be able to tolerate for more than a minute, yet we’re forced to endure each of them for an hour and a half; the characterizations may be accurate, but that doesn’t mean they’re funny. It may raise a chuckle or two, but the remainder of the film is a chore to sit through. It’s targets are too easy to mock, and the jokes are often predictable or recycled. I can’t even recommend it to fans of Guest’s previous films (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and a Mighty Wind) because I am a huge fan of his, and all For Your Consideration made me want to do was revisit those movies instead.
There is a rule of thumb that I have generally observed in my movie going days: I would much rather watch a bad drama than a bad comedy. There is nothing more painful than watching jokes fail, and actors who try their best to no avail. Christopher Guest’s latest comedy is no exception. FInal Grade: C-
