Movie Review: For Your Consideration

Rented "For Your Consideration" for $2.99 on Pay-Per-View over the weekend. This is a Christopher Guest/Eugene Levy-written film with the usual suspects: Guest, Levy, O'Hara, Shearer, Willard, McKean, Begley Jr., and so on. There are a lot of famous people in this film, including some of the more mainstream names: Sandra Oh; Parker Posey; Richard Kind; Ricky Gervais; etc. So with a cast like this, I had high hopes.

Alas, this is no "A Mighty Wind". This is not a mockumentary, as Guest does so well. This is a small film about actors working on a low budget film entitled "Home for Purim" who start to hear and believe that they may be nominated for Oscars and how this news changes their lives and the film they're working on. It is an effort by Guest to show the shallowness of Hollywood--hardly a new concept--but For Your Consideration ultimately delivers a shallow product itself. Where other Guest films have left me laughing out loud or at least smiling ruefully, this one raised more gasps than smiles. It seems they may be trying for poignancy but in the midst of all these Hollywood caricatures, it comes across to me as a little sad and cold.

I give the film 1 out of 4 Jujubees.