Media Maven: "For your Consideration" Movie Review
The latest film from director Christopher Guest mixes lunacy and reality to cook up an entertaining cerebral comedy.

“For Your Consideration” is Christopher Guest’s latest production and collaboration with Eugene Levy. These two men showcase their talent as both writers and actors in this comedy. Christopher Guest departs from the film venue of mockumentary, yet the movie has the familiar mark of Guest combining lunacy with reality and coming up with one cerebral comedy.

Once again the talented cast of myrmidons from previous Guest films gather together to spoof Hollywood and all the hoopla that surrounds the Academy Awards. Four actors filming a movie set in the South in the 1940s are all vying for an Oscar nomination after hearing that lead actress Marilyn Hack (played by Catherine O’Hara) has been favored as an Oscar contender.

The film within this film, "Home For Purim," is a hokey pretext to introduce these self absorbed actors. It also serves to introduce us to the rest of the ensemble cast who so naturally caricature all the beautiful “it” people who sell a Hollywood movie.

It is fun to pick out the ingenious veterans of this film. Jane Lynch as a TV Hollywood Now anchor gives an understated performance that balances the over the top antics of Now co anchor Fred Willard. A testament to the chameleon talent of these actors speaks for itself as Jennifer Cooleridge conspicuously plays a clueless blonde with power. Sporting a cropped haircut, Larry Miller as Syd Finkelman plays a studio exec whose job it is to convince the movie’s production company to tone down this epic film’s “Jewishness.”

In the span of this film Catherine O’Hara goes from mature film actress to playing an aging, Jewish, dying matriarch on film and then revealing her hip, Hollywood botoxed self while promoting the film on all of the talk show circuits; only to be seen the day after the Academy Awards as a drunken, disheartened, Oscar less actress who later turns acting maven using her superior “acting chops” to enlighten younger, hopeful underlings.

Harry Shearer is the superannuated actor who hopes Home For Purim will revitalize his meager film career and save him from being the pitch wiener (er pitchman) for a national hot dog chain. Ed Begley Jr. convinces us he’s a heterosexual happily-married Hollywood gay makeup artist; as does Parker Posey present herself as a marginal comedienne trying to crossover into films.

Anybody who is a fan of anyone of these actors will enjoy this movie. If all this sounds crazy enough to be plausible then run, don’t walk, to rent this farcical film, “For Your Consideration.”

Jan James Stetter
		About the author:
		Jan James Stetter is the "Media Maven" for Cincy Chic. A Cincinnati native, Jan resides in the side of town that bore LaRosa’s pizzas and Skyline chili. Stetter is a discerning film critic letting readers know what is hot and what is not at the box office. She welcomes input and feedback from her audience, so e-mail her a jstetter@cincychic.com.
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Last update: 27-07-2007 07:45

Published in : Magazine Items, Social