Don't Believe the Hype

Awesome Movie

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Jay Berman (Christopher Guest) is directing his movie "Home for Purim". Philip Koontz (Bob Balaban) and Lane Iverson (Michael McKean) are the writers. Whitney Taylor Brown (Jennifer Coolidge) is the producer with diaper money. Marilyn Hack (Catherine O'Hara), Victor Allan Miller (Harry Shearer), Callie Webb (Parker Posey), Debbie Gilchrist (Rachael Harris), and Brian Chubb (Christopher Moynihan) are some of the actors. None of them are big stars. Morley Orfkin (Eugene Levy) is a small time agent. A rumor spreads that one of the actors is getting Oscar buzz. Corey Taft (John Michael Higgins) is an incompetent publicist.The great thing about Christopher Guest mockumentaries is that he takes characters from little known worlds and make them stars. The problem with this one is that these Hollywood characters have been done by everybody. The familiar cast of players are unable to get big laughs. It is a valiant effort. This is good for Guest fans but a limited comedy for non fans.

Improvisational comedy is sometimes likened to dancing on the edge of something, in that an element of risk lends excitement to the performance. But when you fall off, how worthwhile is the performance?Watching "For Your Consideration" is to watch improvisational comedy when it goes wrong. Ideas are introduced only to fester without payoff. Characters change without reason or point. Too many actors struggle for a purpose to being there. "What about me?" yells one, and it's a motif for the whole film, as director Christopher Guest observes in his DVD commentary. Just not the way he means it.The film begins on the set of the film "Home For Purim." Right away we get an early sign of the movie's desperation; it's supposed to be funny because the characters are Jewish but have American Southern accents. Shalom, y'all, get it! "Home For Purim" brings together a group of struggling actors who have spent decades working for scale; this time, rumors spring up that there could be Oscar nominations for these hard- luck cases. Watching this go to the heads of the cast and crew is in large part what is supposed to make "For Your Consideration" a comedy.The worst case is Marilyn Hack, played by Catherine O'Hara with a feral desperation too severe to be enjoyed. Watching her morph from tired trooper to clutching plastic-surgery horror show brings out to me the underlying cruelty that is Guest's preferred comic medium, and which ruined for me an earlier, better film of his, "Waiting For Guffman.""Guffman" had laughs, while his dog-show send-up "Best In Show" had much more, textured performances that clearly benefit from their improvisatory feel and develop a set of first-class story arcs entirely missing here. This time we get a ton of characters here only because Guest has his stock company of regulars he uses without fail in these kind of movies, whether or not he has a part for them. Eugene Levy is wasted as an agent who can't keep off his cell phone while Guest himself plays a director who eats a lot. Both seem to rely on their kooky wigs for the comedy their performances lack.Fred Willard and John Michael Higgins played two of "Best In Show's" most successfully outsized characters; here they press too hard to bring the funny. Parker Posey, mesmerizing in her other Guest roles, gets lost here in a strange, unaffecting romantic subplot that is supposed to seem tragic but just comes off as inevitable, if unpleasantly painful. There was a funny scene revolving around movie posters, and a brief look at a terrific weatherwoman ventriloquist (Nina Conti), but that was it. Even for a film that ran under 90 minutes, it goes on too long.The whole concept of the film is flawed. Guest presents the characters as hopeless losers, yet just to get the attention they do making a nothing film would seem the kind of major success "Consideration" takes pains not to acknowledge. Even the non-improvised parts, like the parodies of talk shows and film clips, come off as half-baked. Good comedy isn't afraid to get mean, but being mean doesn't make good comedy. That distinction seems lost here.

*Spoiler/plot- 2006, A small Jewish themed film (the film "Home for Purim," a drama set in the mid-1940s American South) is being made in Hollywood and production problems come alone the way that need to be solved creatively.*Special Stars- Catherine O'hara, Ed Bagley Jr, Eugene Levy, Harry Shearer, Bob Balaban, Michael McKean, Fred Ward, Jane Lynch, Christopher Guest, Rachael Harris, Carrie Aizley, Jennifer Coolidge*Theme- Hollywood film business is a crazy impressionable system.*Trivia/location/goofs- The first of this comedy acting groups ensemble cast's films to follow with many more mainstream feature films. Film is made in Hollywood on studio lots.*Emotion- An enjoyable but rather crazy look at things from Hollywood. Actors to the press are explored in a funny way with a small amount of truth to make these things strike home with the film's audience. Demonstrates the production of a feature film in Hollywood with comedic aspects showing the flawed human system that is movie making.

This movie has the usual Guest-company virtues: the deep sense of ensemble, the absurdism embedded in genuine nuanced characterization, the flighty unpredictability. But the usual complaint - that things don't quite feel satisfying or resolved when the lights come up - is almost fatal here. I got the distinct feeling that as Guest strove to shoehorn in all his pals and highlight all the good bits, he lost the main thread. At first there's just a bit of discomfort with the overplayed and hyperextended what's-the-internet oldster naivete, and a vague sense of not-quite-clicking about the film within a film; but then suddenly "Home For Purim" has morphed into "Home For Thanksgiving" and it's like we dropped a reel even though I'm watching on DVD. Half the characters completely disappear (including Guest's overly familiar effete director), we never get so much as a line of dialogue from Home For Thanksgiving, and Catherine O'Hara's actress undergoes a reversal that is allowed no transition whatsoever - in one scene she's Martha Graham, in the next she's Joan Van Ark. This is highly dispiriting; it's like someone gave up. I hope they find a way to keep working together that gives things a boost, because this misses the mark.