Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

FloodClearwater Catherine O'Hara and Harry Shearer plumb surprising emotional depths in their tender portrayals of past-their-sell-by-date stars in Christopher Guest's comedic ensemble parody For Your Consideration. Co-written by Eugene Levy, FYC is supposed to be a film that skewers Hollywood's award-ceremony-industrial complex, and it does, but it is also Guest's most character-focused film.O'Hara and Shearer portray veteran actors of less than distinguished service who find 'one last great chance' to earn the admiration of their peers once they are cast as leads in an ill-starred, oft- rewritten 'small' film directed by the estimable Jay Berman (Guest), "Home for Purim."The rest of the ever-expanding players in Guest's company of parodic itinerants, from Ed Begley, Jr. to Bob Balaban, to Jane Lynch and Michael McKean, surround and fill in the rest of "Purim's" cast, crew, publicists, grips, accountants, celebrity interviewers, security guards, and gawkers. This is a film about a film after all, and Guest and Levy omit no mockable trade in their fictional movie production and marketing process.But O'Hara and Shearer get most of the quality screen time, and they do not waste a moment of it. The sweetness at the bottom of the film's pie is their characters' comedically haunted, grasping, chin up with watering eyes anticipation that, by the end of this particular grind, they'll have arrived as the real stars they've always known themselves to be. The success of their focused performance, and of Guest and Levy's decision to let them carry so much of the film's load, arrives when it occurs to the viewer, through the laughs about Hollywood and its prissy foible-y emotional excess, that what haunts these two actors is the same fear and yearning that, at some point in life, runs through us all.

Bill Slocum 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.

elshikh4 I know it's hard to find a movie with the 2 qualities, but this one has them both finely. It's a wonderful movie about living the false dream of just "nominating" for the Oscar. With 2 veteran has-been (or never-been) actors, and one newcomer, we follow the dream that nearly turns into nightmare. It succeeds in being not only a movie about bunch of actors, but also a movie about the backstage of shooting a movie, the agents, the scriptwriters, the producing, and the media as well. It does a good satirical job with all of them. So what's here to be satirized? A lot. The ignorance. The lack of opportunities for old actors in Hollywood. The fake glamour; where the botox and the plastic surgeries do the job to make the actors younger and freaky (the examples in Hollywood are endless nowadays !). The shallowness, the silliness, and the brazenness of the media, with great take on the tabloid shows that need nothing but sensationalism (at one point an announcer declares that the only thing he cares for in a movie is the nude scenes !). And yes, a sneer at the Oscar (the way the movie within the movie was acted was horrible to laughable extent) along with whoever dreams of it; notice well how the only one who didn't dream of it was the one who got nominated for it ! There is a perfect meaning thrown through the movie; because while these people, the movie's no star characters, try hard in an industry that stands on the star system, and leaves such actors in the bottom alone despite any talent they have, this movie comes to say that these people themselves, the movie's characters and their performers, CAN make a movie without The Star, and make it work, being together a big star apart. It's like (For Your Consideration) you the producers of Hollywood ! As for the shortcomings, it lacked the deep penetration into the characters; for instance we knew nothing about the special life of Marilyn Hack (the character played by Catherine O'Hara). Maybe most of the acting, in the movie within the movie, said how pathetic these actors are, while I thought that it would have been stronger if it told us how they are really good, being treated unfairly by always bad circumstances. As if the desperate way to make laughs disappointed a good issue there. Moreover, the end didn't click well. I couldn't understand the matter of the "mole" or the metaphor in it. Anyhow, that very scene didn't wind up things rightly. And finally, the character of the director (played by the movie's real director Christopher Guest) was the least interesting one in the movie, rather uninteresting. I don't know why he, as a co-writer, didn't make it at least funny. All in all, it is not a black comedy inasmuch as talking about black reality. However it leaves you with a powerful sense of bitterness just like a distinct black comedy. The face of (Catherine O'Hara), fine actress by the way, looking deformed by plastic surgeries during the last 20 minutes, sums up this movie's mix; as a comedy mixed with painful case of a human in a crises. Strange mix but highly effective.

lor_ 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.