Christopher Guest's name is synonymous with the mockumentary genre-he helped create it with This is Spinal Tap and made it popular with Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind.
With For Your Consideration, Guest and longtime collaborator Eugene Levy made a conscious decision to abandon the improvisational approach his last three films showcased. Unfortunately, the strength of Guest's work has always been the quality of his casts and their impressive ability to create catch-phrases and comedy gold out of midair. Attempting to force a tightly plotted narrative onto comedic forces like Fred Willard and Jennifer Coolidge just doesn't work.
Consideration is the story of the making of Home for Purim, a tepid "home for the holidays" drama fully comfortable among B-movie dreck. When a movie gossip website starts predicting an Oscar nomination for lead actress Marilyn Hack (Catherine O'Hara), the cast and crew are sent into a tizzy.
The highlights of the film are Ricky Gervais' turn as a studio executive aimed at sucking the "Jewish-ness" out of Purim, and Guest as the film's clueless, pot-bellied director. But overall, Consideration is simply not a particularly funny movie-and if it's intended to be a finely tuned satire, it falls well short of making a point.
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