For Your Consideration
Genre: Comedy
Cast: Catherine O’Hara, Harry Shearer, …
Director: Christopher Guest
Release: (2006)
There’s probably a group of you out there for whom the following brief tirade will just be preaching to the choir. If you are one of these people, please forgive me this brief deviation from the review at hand. But if you truly a member of this choir, you’ll understand all the more why this needs to be said.
Shame on you, Lindsay Lohan’s America! I’m not sure what it will take before People magazine’s subscription list finally wakes up and appreciates just exactly the significance of what Christopher Guest and his ultra-exclusive inner circle of talent (who I am hereby officially dubbing the “Guest Stars”, while shaking my head incredulously at the entertainment media in general for not coming up with it sooner) have done over the past 20 plus years. First, and I cannot emphasize enough how remarkable this is, they’ve pretty much operated with impunity for decades – making what they want, when they want and only with whom they want – in a town where everyone else needs to run their lunch order past three different test groups before getting a greenlight to order. Second, they’ve spawned the entire genre of loosely improvised, understated comedy that has become a cottage industry for networks looking to capture critical acclaim and culty followings. Curb Your Enthusiasm? The Office (UK & USA)? Arrested Development? even ESPN’s long-running This Is Sportscenter campaign? Derivative, derivative, derivative, and, yes, derivative of Guest’s style in every way. Not that each of these doesn’t have merit on its own, but let’s just be clear here: for all the great things these shows are, stylistically original is not one of them. The art of exploiting free-form dialogue, unspoken punchlines, awkward silences and fleeting expression may not have been created by the Guest Stars either but you can argue that they may have perfected it, and long before these other young punks showed up. And finally (perhaps most importantly), they introduced millions of us to Parker Posey, the most conceptually ideal woman in the world today, causing thousands and thousands of aging, still single, Gen-X men to continue dumping perfectly compatible girlfriends who fail to live up to her standard.
Ok, I just needed to get that off my chest. For Your Consideration is the latest production by the merry band of misfits who brought us This is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. As with its predecessors, there is no one person who could accurately be called the star, but in general the story grounds itself around the unlikely resurrection of the acting careers of an aging has-been, Marilyn Hack (Catherine O’Hara) and never-was Victor Allan Miller (Harry Shearer). When a bit of blogger buzz about their latest otherwise unspectacular movie catches wind, the Hollywood rumor mill goes full-tilt and sweeps Marilyn, Victor and the rest of the crew up into a frothing at the mouth frenzy over the prospect of an Oscar nomination. All the old Guest Stars are back, filling out various central and peripheral roles to the production and promotion of the film, and there are a few deserving new faces in this one as well. Perhaps in a nod to those new, culty, loosely improvised comedies patterned on the Guest framework, Ricky Gervais (The Office, UK), John Krasinski (The Office, USA), Richard Kind (recurring role on Curb your Enthusiasm) and a few other notable faces show up with varying degrees of significance. Along the way Guest and co-writer Eugene Levy leave no stone unturned as they take a hot-poker to anyone and everyone involved in the art-for-money business of big studio Hollywood. Along the way they even mix in a little message, offering their own perspective on the profoundly ridiculous, silly and sad lives of those caught up in the ultra-superficial.
I’ve read several reviews of this movie from people who say Guest lost his touch for subtlety and understatement in this one and tried too hard to write in the gags. I gotta say, I don’t get it. There are as many break-you-down laughing, subtle moments in this movie as anything else he’s done and it’s a worthy addition to the collection. I could list a dozen moments off the top of my head right now, including Sarah Shahi’s dead on parody of the local morning infotainment host or Jane Lynch’s hilarious awkward posture and forced banter on the set of the “Entertainment Tonight” send-up, to name just a few. I’ve never read anyone with a specific example of how this movie is too overt with its jokes, just a lot of reviews generally saying it is. Sorry, not buying it. It’s like whenever Will Ferrell comes out with a new movie and when you ask people how it was, there’s always a handful that will invariably start off with, “Well, it’s not as good as Anchorman, but …”. For some, this will be an honest reflection, but for most it’s involuntary groupthink. Until someone can explain to me with any real evidence why For Your Consideration is a step off from Guest’s other works, I’ve got to stick up for Christopher and the Guest Stars here. For Your Consideration is a fun, funny farce of a film that stands alongside any of the troupe’s previous works and even slightly above the overrated, overexposed Best in Show. And you know this.
Grading
Story: A
Acting: A
Visuals: B (nothing really expected, though)
Originality/Innovation: A
Enjoyability: A
DVD Extras: A (several hilarious deleted scenes, if you can’t watch them all be sure to skip to the last one and watch the strangely mesmerizing act of the gorgeous Nina Conti)
Overall: A
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