Hollywood hits close to home for most directors -- usually much too close to satirize, especially when a paycheck is on the line. Though some have attempted it before (the late iconoclast Robert Altman's The Player stands as probably the best contender) veteran mockumentarian Christopher Guest has decided to shed the documentary format that served him so well in Best in Show and A Mighty Wind and tackle Hollywood his way -- by making his most average movie since Waiting for Guffman.
Keep in mind that "average" in Guest's world is still a step up from every other funny movie that hits theaters in a given month, and that For Your Consideration will, in all likelihood, be the cleverest film of November. But cleverest in a month that has given us, so far, Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj and Let's Go To Prison is unfortunately not clever enough to compete with Guest's best, among them This Is Spinal Tap, the "rockumentary" that defined a genre.
Instead, our new Christopher Guest movie is a little quieter, a little slower, and a little less laugh-heavy than we'd like, yet, in the best tradition of the Thanksgiving season, thanks are due for a new Christopher Guest movie nevertheless.
Guest, who also plays the quintessential Hawaiian-shirted, frizzy-haired Hollywood director in the film, focuses on the making of the indie Home for Purim -- a "period piece" that looks to reignite the floundering careers of Marilyn Hack (Catherine O'Hara) and Victor Allen Miller (Harry Shearer) while offering a break for lovers and newcomers Brian Chubb (Christopher Moynihan) and Callie Webb (Parker Posey). They're aided by Corey Taft (John Michael Higgins), a publicist who is still struggling with the concept of the "World Wide Intraweb," and producer Whitney Taylor Brown (Jennifer Coolidge), gifted with a larger bra size than vocabulary, and lacerated by the faux-hawked Chuck Porter (Fred Willard) and eternally blonde Cindy Martin (Jane Lynch), both pitch-perfect entertainment show hosts.
By discarding the documentary crew that spent more time on screen than some of the actors in his past films, Guest frees himself up to focus on his familiar cadre of stars in a story about the making of an indie flick, and, as always, they produce.
Though their faces are familiar, Guest's traveling minstrel show of supporting actors have, by and large, never become familiar enough with audiences to elicit a "Hey, I saw that guy in..." allowing us to see them reinvent themselves, time and again, as lesbian dog trainers, aging folk musicians, washed-up community theater buffs and gigantic wiener hot dog mascots.
Even Eugene Levy, in a role that seems to never be without a bagel and a gold watch, sheds his American Pie cross and becomes a Hollywood agent, no small feat for the man who starred as a pant-wetting hostage alongside a scenery-chewing Samuel L. Jackson in the universally panned The Man.
The other, smaller-name actors have little trouble filling their roles as the movie explores the critical buzz surrounding Home for Purim and the syrupy kiss it gives to the cast of naïve L.A. newcomers and paycheck-hungry veterans, and the lengths they'll go to taste it again. For the older actors -- many who have worked with Guest for most of his career -- the roles are painfully familiar.
Catherine O'Hara, playing middle-aged shut-in actress Hack, has had a successful Hollywood career, but her performance is squirming in its authenticity, right down to her awkward probing of the lighting director over the catering table: "Stop me when I've gone too far. How do the shots look?" She gnaws on a Swedish fish, then blurts, "How do I look?" Her transformation by the end of the film makes an episode of Nip/Tuck look like an etiquette class, yet it is not untirely unexpected in an industry where past-40 actresses are shuttled into Lifetime television specials and painkiller commercials.
Harry Shearer, with a versatile voice that never seems to match with his hangdog face, looks appropriately ridiculous as a hot dog mascot and an exercise infomercial star -- "I always wear my balls when I exercise" -- and his fawning interviews with Willard's Porter, who recommends the "many pictures, little text" of The Little Engine That Could as his favorite reading, lead to starring interviews on any entertainment show that will take him, up to and beyond grinding with tweens on a TRL-esque countdown, slick with a new makeover and highlights. Though she's spared the spotlight that drifts over Shearer, Parker Posey's Callie Webb ditches stand-up shows for a chance at movie stardom, and Posey plays her with the same loose intensity she brings to every role, making her believable but, by the end, as awkward as the rest of them.
The "rest of them" include Guest's regulars -- Ed Begley Jr. as a make-up artist, Larry Miller as a marketing guru, Bob Balaban as a writer -- but also the new face of jumpy, workplace comedy: creator of The Office Ricky Gervais looking smug and shined-up as a studio executive- who hints at a new generation of Guest-inspired films.
Like everyone in this film, however, Gervais can't seem to get truly inspired by the material he's bitten off, and, though try as it will to skewer Hollywood's pretensions and preening, ultimately For Your Consideration just can't quite provide the bite for the buck.
In an age where in-your-face comedy à la Borat has perhaps taken a bit of the sheen from the carefully crafted tableaus of ineptitude, a Christopher Guest movie up to the standards of his own films would be like a good day at a nude beach -- the sun is warm and the water inviting, but you still have to be momentarily uncomfortable as you get naked.
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