Es lebe Hollywood

Having just searched through 137 IMDb comments (whew!) of Guest's film I was quite surprised that nobody noticed the central in-joke at work here, one that spoiled an otherwise mildly amusing effort for me. I guess you have to be a film industry insider, or at least have a working knowledge of film history, to analyze these seemingly transparent recent movies, and everyone struck out.

The central character, played so winningly by Catherine O'Hara, is obviously based on a real-life actress and her Oscar campaign. The real Hollywood actors, namely the typical Academy members who make up the Oscar voting population that selects the nominees annually, will instantly recognize who I'm referring to, even though those intrepid IMDb addicts dropped the ball. The answer is plainly Sally Kirkland, a talented character actress who indeed was nominated for best actress in 1987 for her performance in the indie film ANNA. I knew Sally quite well at the time, and she was completely sincere in the campaign she launched, unsuccessfully, to try and win the coveted Oscar, losing out to Cher for MOONSTRUCK that year. Her campaigning predated what has become merely customary, as the Weinsteins later perfected the art of actively manipulating Academy voters to get annual nominations and wins for their various Miramax (subsequently TWC) films, right up through somehow managing a Penelope Cruz nom for "Nine".

Sally's large breast implants are an easy target for O'Hara here, with Willard's funny line about her décolletage after interviewing her post-Oscar snub: "Now I've seen the Grand Canyon". For the uninitiated, if you click on Sally's IMDb page you will see how her face in the '80s/'90s closely resembles the look O'Hara captured in her impressive bit of "frozen visage" acting of the final reels of Guest's satire. I shudder to think of how Nicole Kidman, Jessica Lange and Meg Ryan will fare as potential future targets of the merciless Guest/O'Hara team.

We all know from numerous lectures by the latter-day greats like Steve Martin that "comedy isn't pretty". But I was disappointed at Guest and company taking potshots at Ms. Kirkland. She is a sincere artist and while everyone in the entertainment world is out there available for ridicule I was taken aback by the somewhat underhanded, infra dig lampooning here. Knowing Sally I'm sure she took it in her stride when FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION was released, but no one likes to be mocked. Even masochists would prefer some old-fashioned corporal punishment to being humiliated in front of their peers.

As an aside, I admire the talent of these comedy geniuses, including Levy and Guest. But I think a telling anecdote of an incident I witnessed long ago shows that many of them have feet of clay. As a film critic I was attending the press screening for about 50 people at Magno on Times Square in NYC in 1980 for the new film THE FIRST DEADLY SIN, starring Frank Sinatra and Faye Dunaway. The film when released soon after was not successful with critics or audiences and proved to be Frank's final big-screen role, in fact his only movie role after 1970. There is an etiquette at press screenings, but not just critics are invited. Sitting near me was Harry Shearer (a key member of Guest's stock company, and of course immortal from his THIS IS SPINAL TAP participation), whom I recognized immediately from his Saturday NIGHT LIVE appearances plus a friend who I couldn't place. Starting a few minutes into the Sinatra film, which was a gritty, NYC-set thriller, the two of them launched into a series of catcalls and shout-out jokey remarks at the expense of the movie that would have made the yet-to-be-invented stars of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRE 3000 proud, or fit well within the current drag queen-led mocking of movies that goes on weekly at my local Chelsea cinema. I even shushed them (!) to no avail. This uncouth behavior stuck with me, and always made me wonder about the sincerity of comics at the level of talent, which I readily concede, of a Shearer, or a Second City denizen. I know contemporary comedians famously study people they see on the street, subway, etc. in ordinary life to build material, but the disrespectful attitude of Shearer & bud toward Sinatra, Dunaway and their earnest (if not at the top of their game) movie collaborators appalled me no end. It's not surprising that poor Faye met a similar fate the following year with the release of MOMMIE DEAREST, which stands as perhaps the most-ridiculed and campy of modern Hollywood releases.

I love this acting troupe. They are a well tuned machine. Though this movie is perhaps a little "inside" of the Hollywood Movie Industry, and the publicity machine on which it is driven, all of the regulars and the new faces invited into the fold give wonderful performances and play their parts with just the right amount of camp with their tongues in their cheeks. I mean after all. don't many of us WANT to know about the inside of the industry? The duo entertainment reporters ( Jane Lynch and Fred Willard) are hilarious and Catherine O'hara's performance is masterful. (do I hear Oscar Buzzzz?) But that is not to say any of the cast's performances were not noteworthy. My whole family had a great time. This is not meant to be a Great panoramic epic, this is good clean hilarity from some of our favorite actors.

If you are a fan of "Best in Show", Waiting for Guffman etc, or you just want to get to know these gifted actors, DO go see this film, nap before you go so you can be happy and rested and hear the inside jokes that spark the guffaws heard throughout the theater. Zaina

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.

I don't have much to say about "For Your Consideration," except that I liked it, in spite of the negative reviews it received, and I wanted to say that here in case other viewers, like me, put off viewing it because the reviews put us off.

"For Your Consideration" is a small, brief (86 minutes), sweet, funny movie. It's not as laugh-out-loud funny as "Best in Show" (few movies are) but I liked it better than "Mighty Wind," which I also liked.

Christopher Guest's usual crew is in its usual fine form. Catherine O'Hara is funny in a whole new way, with at least one scene that is quite poignant and unforgettable, at least to struggling artists. John Michael Higgins does a very funny William H. Macy-like character. Jane Lynch is dead-on as an "Entertainment Tonight" style tabloid "journalist."

I even liked the ventriloquist Nina Conti -- and I normally run from the room when a ventriloquist comes on.

I look forward to Christopher Guest movies in the same way Ralphie did for his much beloved Red Ryder BB Gun in "A Christmas Story". Drenched with his deadpan wit, Guest's mockumentaries have been such well-targeted show business satires that it's hard to know when the script stops and the improvised reality begins. But that's a lot of the fun with his films, even though his newest is easily the most structured of the bunch. Along with constant co-writer and co-star Eugene Levy, Guest picks a target ripe with possibilities in this 2006 comedy, the Oscar-baiting season prior to the nominations, and surprisingly foregoes the direct interview format in favor of a more traditional narrative. I have to admit I miss some of this dynamic because the on-camera realism resulted in some of the funniest moments in the previous films.

Gratefully, what has been kept from his other films is Guest's stellar ensemble company of comic actors, and this time an even larger cast has been gathered, none of whom disappoint in this outing. The plot focuses on the production of a low-budget studio-bound film, "Home for Purim", a WWII-era family melodrama about a Jewish family in Georgia coping with the mother's terminal illness and the daughter's emergence as a lesbian. Directed by an authoritarian nebbish with an Art Garfunkel hairdo named Jay Berman, the film looks to be an overly sincere piece of tripe, but a blogger on one of the movie sites has predicted leading lady Marilyn Hack, a resigned, over-the-hill B-actress, will be nominated for an Oscar. This starts an Oscar buzz that engulfs the two other nominal principals of the movie, hot-dog pitchman Victor Allen Miller and "serious" actress Callie Webb, and the tidal wave of publicity drastically changes the direction and marketing campaign of the movie even before it's completed.

Guest and Levy fully capture the superficial pandering that occurs when the buzz is in full swing, and they particularly ridicule the ignorance and outdated thinking of those who find themselves in this lightning-in-a-bottle situation. There are acidic jabs at all the infotainment programs - "Entertainment Tonight", "MTV TRL", "The Charlie Rose Show" and "Ebert & Roeper" – but this is character-driven farce, and several stand out. In a brave turn as Marilyn, the wonderful and ever-dependable Catherine O'Hara superbly captures the almost overnight evolution from forgotten, timeworn actress into botox-infused, cleavage-squeezing A-lister wannabe. Harry Shearer gets his best showcase yet as the put-upon Victor whose mouthy agent Morley Orfkin refuses to take his calls until the buzz hits them. As Callie, Parker Posey is more in reactive mode here, though she has a funny Sandra Bernhard-like bit with her character's one-woman show, "No Penis Intended".

Everyone else gets less screen time, but they all provide memorably riotous contributions – Guest as Berman, Levy as Morley, Jennifer Coolidge as clueless producer Whitney Taylor Brown, John Michael Higgins as bromide-spouting publicist Corey Taft, Don Lake and Michael Hitchcock as the Love It/Hate It movie critics, Michael McKean and Bob Balaban as the academic screenwriters, Ed Begley Jr. as Marilyn's fey hairdresser (and biggest fan), Ricky Gervais as the oily studio honcho, and best of all, as the entertainment TV co-hosts, Fred Willard as mohawk-moussed Chuck Porter and Jane Lynch as gam-showcasing Mary Hart-knockoff Cindy Martin. I imagine Guest's reputation is the reason you see such high-profile actors like Sandra Oh and Craig Bierko in nothing more than bit parts here. The film takes a sharp turn toward the end that adds surprising vitriol to the laughs, and the vituperative tone makes the proceedings all the more devastating and resonant. More like "A Mighty Wind" with its dramatic undercurrents, this one is not as laugh-out-loud as "Waiting for Guffman" and "Best in Show", but it shows a continuing maturation in Guest's film-making technique that is most welcome.