Hard to lampoon the already-foolishOscar fever gets Guest treatment
In the comic calculus of Christopher Guest, small talent provokes big laughs.Frustratingly in For Your Consideration, his satire of talent-challenged indie thespians stung by Oscar buzz, the laughs, like the actors, work for scale.
In the comic calculus of Christopher Guest, small talent provokes big laughs.
Frustratingly in For Your Consideration, his satire of talent-challenged indie thespians stung by Oscar buzz, the laughs, like the actors, work for scale.
Ever since This Is Spinal Tap (1984), which Guest cowrote (and costarred in as Nigel Tufnel, corroding metalhead), the writer/director has dedicated himself to tickling the conventions of what one of his starry-eyed poseurs might call "the business of show."
Having skewered indie filmmakers in The Big Picture (1989), theater amateurs in Waiting for Guffman (1996), dog fanciers in Best in Show (2000), and folk musicians in A Mighty Wind (2003), Guest chases Oscar fever, a quarry that keeps slipping from his fingers.
In his view, everyone, especially the has-beens and never-weres in a quirky no-budget affair called Home for Purim, gets delirious when it comes to lobbying for nominations and statuettes.
His repertory irregulars - the resourceful improvisers Catherine O'Hara, Harry Shearer, Eugene Levy and Fred Willard - are on hand to throw comic wrenches into the Hollywood hype machine. But they don't disable the monolith.
Guest and Levy, his cowriter, run up against a formidable problem: How can they satirize Oscar frenzy when awards season - eight weeks of predictions and puffery that commences New Year's Day and culminates on the night of the Academy Awards in late February - is itself a parody?
Since Guest and company can't effectively satirize the hype, they spoof it.
They kid the earnest films that come out of nowhere to get kissed by Oscar (think The Trip to Bountiful and Tender Mercies). They kid the false modesty of actors whose egos are in inverse proportion to their lack of professional success (think Sally Kirkland and F. Murray Abraham).
They tweak the celebrity journalists - TV movie critics, PBS gasbags, and Entertainment Tonight jesters - who pontificate at length about a movie's Oscar chances but never actually see the movie.
Willard (his hair styled in what can only be called a fauxhawk) and Jane Lynch are droll as Entertainment Tonight-like commentators. Similarly, O'Hara, the heart of the film, is cruelly funny as Marilyn Hack, an unknown character actress whose head gets turned (and face lifted) as the result of Oscar talk.
Individual scenes come across as amusing, but Guest loses comic momentum when he shifts between the shooting of the lachrymose Home for Purim and the segments lampooning entertainment media.
There are no belly laughs here, only rueful chortles about the confederacy of chuckleheads that calls itself the entertainment industry.
Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215 854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/carrierickey.
Movie Review
For Your Consideration
** 1/2
Opens today at area theaters
Produced by Karen Murphy, directed by Christopher Guest, written by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, photography by Roberto Schaefer, distributed by Warner Independent Pictures.
Running time: 1 hour, 26 mins.
Marilyn Hack. . . Catherine O'Hara
Victor Allan Miller. . . Harry Shearer
Morley Orfkin. . . Eugene Levy
Jay Berman. . . Christopher Guest
Callie Webb. . . Parker Posey
Parent's guide: PG-13 (profanity)
Showing at: area theaters
