Sunday, April 22, 2007

Film: For Your Consideration

This has long left the cinema, but one day you will be able to borrow it on DVD or download it from that Interweb. As you know, it is the latest of those Christopher Guest ensemble comedies. Much discourse surround this being the first of them not filmed in what they call mockumentary format. The film follows some movie people as they work on a truly awful sounding family drama called Home For Purim. The picture starts attracting some Oscar buzz and people start thinking that they are about to really hit the big time.

Now, you know the way with A Mighty Wind things moved a bit away from being solely comedic to being about characters and stuff like that? For Your Consideration goes further with this. While it definitely has plenty of chortlesome moments (e.g. whenever Jennifer Coolidge is on screen), a lot of it focuses on the somewhat miserable lives of people for whom the big-time remains perpetually round the corner. Catherine O'Hara's character in particular is all about the miserableness, portraying well the desperation of an aging actor realising that she is never going to do the Hollywood woman equivalent of playing the Dane. The later scenes, where she has had some kind of botox facelift and dresses like Paris Hilton's slappery sister, are particularly grim.

It is curious how "It's not that funny" is seen by many as the knock-down argument against more recent Guest films - not something you could ever use against Inland Empire

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