>>REVIEW
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
STARRING: Harry Shearer, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, Eugene Levy and Fred Willard
DIRECTED BY: Christopher Guest
Opens Wednesday, November 22
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Christopher Guest has gathered his usual ensemble for his latest social observation – the perilously fickle and often ridiculous nature of life in La La Land.
Just as his previous work probed folksy reunions (A Mighty Wind), rabid dog show contestants (Best in Show), and community theatre (Waiting for Guffman), For Your Consideration casts a critical eye on Tinseltown. Guest relentlessly lampoons the Hollywood hit making machine, and it makes for scathingly hilarious viewing.
The film within the film, Home for Purim, is meant to be a period melodrama about an ailing matriarch (Catherine O'Hara) and her fragmented family gathering for a holiday weekend. When an unnamed blogger muses about a possible nod from the Academy on the Internet, the publicists grab the ball and sprint for every talk show in town.
This is a delightfully black observation of the way hits are manufactured in the image obsessed world of film. It's never disclosed who started the online buzz, but it's easy to guess who may have ignited the hype.
Staccato-paced entertainment shows featuring augmented, awkwardly posed mannequins and inappropriately youthful male commentators gushily dishing the scoop are brilliantly satirized. Clearly, Guest and Eugene Levy (who co-wrote the scripted portions of the movie) have much disdain for those "Hollywood Minute" shows.
Fred Willard as Chuck Porter with his ridiculous faux-hawk embodies the entertainment piranhas, more concerned with their own hair and image than obtaining substantial information. As he and his co-host Cindy Martin (Jane Lynch) start circling the cast, they react first in surprise, then glee, then greed.
Once "the buzz" descends on the well-meaning indie film, all hell breaks loose. Catherine O'Hara plummets from a serious, albeit absent-minded, actor to a duck-lipped, trashy floozy in her desperate attempt for approval. It's a bit painful to watch Parker Posey morph from a subdued, but well-meaning performer to a shrilly obsessed diva. That said, no one does gum chewing, glazed-over indifference better than Posey.
Harry Shearer as Victor Allan Miller, an actor trying to lose the stigma of schlepping kosher hot dogs on commercial television, conveys just the right amount of desperation and exasperation as an actor who has seen better days. His scene bumping booties with young hoochie mommas on a hip hop show is fall-down funny.
The remaining cast helps to turn in a stellar satire of the faltering Hollywood empire. For Your Consideration mocks the hit-makers in savage fashion and it's about time. |
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