Director: Christopher Guest
Starring: Catherine O’Hara, Harry Shearer

Harry Shearer as Victor in For Your Consideration. (Courtesy photo)

It is difficult to properly assess a Christopher Guest movie after watching it only once. Each one evolves upon multiple viewings, and each fits better on the small screen than the large one. Guest has crystallized his own “mockumentary” sub-genre with This is Spinal Tap (1984, directed by Rob Reiner), Waiting For Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), and A Mighty Wind (2004). Yet even as his films have gained in popularity, Guest has struggled to grow as a filmmaker. His latest film, For Your Consideration, is not a mockumentary, strictly speaking. But while it is in every other respect a Guest film, I also think it is his weakest yet.

Guest and co-writer Eugene Levy have chosen the entertainment industry and its award-season frenzy as their latest setting, and it is far too broad and well-traveled a subject to adequately lampoon. Why parody an industry that is already a parody of itself? However, Guest and Levy are not truly attempting to satirize the Hollywood’s infatuation with itself: this is more like an imagining. The movie at the center of the story isn’t plausible, the publicists and agents cartoon characters. That is an okay idea, but For Your Consideration doesn’t add up to much after one viewing. But there are, as usual, enough sublime performances to make it worthwhile.

On the set of a small independent film called Home for Purim, word gets around that someone is receiving “Oscar buzz.” Veteran actress Marilyn Hack (Catherine O’Hara), who plays the film’s matriarch, is suddenly getting talked up on Internet sites. The film’s wooden publicist Corey Taft (John Michael Higgins) sets out to build on the buzz, and soon co-star Victor Allan Miller (Harry Shearer) is earning awards consideration, too. In no time ingénue Callie Webb (Parker Posey) is in the mix. That leaves only young star Brian Chubb (Christopher Moynihan) out of the running. The possibility of award recognition consumes the actors and the overall production. Do not worry, all your favorites are around somewhere. Fred Willard and Jane Lynch play hosts of an “Entertainment Tonight”-style show. Eugene Levy is Victor’s hapless agent; Jennifer Coolidge plays the film’s clueless producer; and Michael McKean and Bob Balaban are the writers. In a disturbing trend, Guest relegates himself to minimal screen time as Purim’s director. His character Jay Berman may not be the equal of Guest’s Waiting For Guffman creation Corky St. Clair (who is?), but it is an amazing characterization. Nearly every role is filled out by Guest’s growing company of performers, and that is part of the problem. There are so many people vying for laughs in very brief scenes that the quality of the listening has gone down. There’s also more plot than usual to get across, allowing even less time for the scenes to breathe. The supporting standouts include Rachael Harris (Smoking Gun) as the film’s fifth cast member, Mary Pat Hooligan, and Ed Begley Jr. as stylist Sandy Lane. Among the main cast, the only real dud is Eugene Levy. Levy seems to have forgotten that this is a project he’s supposed to care about, as opposed to the many paycheck jobs he has mugged through over the past five years.

Alex Manugian lives in Sherman Oaks, California, and works for the Cartoon Network. He grew up in Groton and has reviewed movies for Harvard residents for many years.