PLOT: The cast of an inept Southern-Jewish domestic drama lose their collective minds when Oscar "buzz" -- leaked on the Internet during filming -- propels the undistinguished actors, writers and director onto the talk show circuit.
For Your Consideration is not the best film put out by the Christopher Guest rep company. But it might be the funniest.
And it speaks to the sheer skill of the team that a movie so ill-equipped to work as a spoof of Hollywood could lift itself up to achieve a more soulful kind of satire.
For Your Consideration -- about an ill-conceived Southern-Jewish drama whose castmembers lose their collective minds when Oscar "buzz" leaks out mid-filming -- is the first non-mockumentary in the largely improvised series of Guest films featuring his regular players (Eugene Levy, Michael McKean, Parker Posey, Harry Shearer, Fred Willard et al).
That actually isn't a big deal. But it's a departure of another sort for them to travel such well-trodden ground.
As opposed to, say, dog shows (Best In Show), smalltown theatre (Waiting For Guffman) and the cultural flashpoint of early-'60s folk (A Mighty Wind), most people consider themselves practically showbiz experts. It's been spoofed often, including by Guest himself in The Big Picture.
In fact, you probably know more about the awards-show dance than the director, who admits he'd never even seen an ET or Entertainment Extra type of TV magazine show. So Hollywood-philes may be disappointed by the lack of versimilitude in what happens to the cast of the kosher-Tennessee Williams-esque film Waiting For Purim when an "Internet rumour" casts all the main players as Oscar bait.
Well, actually they don't even say "Oscar." It's implied. But there is no leadup of Golden Globes, People's Choice, Directors' Guild Awards, etc., that would follow such an event in real life, softening disappointments and piquing hungers.
The other area where Guest's gang is ill-equipped to spoof Hollywood is age. Middle age is 25 in L.A. and when your "ingenue" is 38-year-old Parker Posey, you are ceding versimilitude to TV's Entourage.
So with so much working against it, it's actually inspiring to see For Your Consideration morph into a funny and moving film. The MVP (and dare I say most Oscar-worthy player?) is Catherine O'Hara as Marilyn Hack, an aging, beaten-down diva whose dead eyes practically come alive in the face of naive hope.
Hack's co-stars include young lovers Callie (Posey) and Brian (Christopher Moynihan) -- whose relationship becomes soured by jealousy -- and Shearer as good-hearted Victor, whose acting skills have been betrayed by his decision to become a product spokesman.
That's the soul of the film, buttressed by sharp exchanges such as, "The awards are the backbone of this industry -- an industry well-known for its lack of backbone."
There's also the usual parade of scene-stealers, including a "faux-hawked" Willard as an idiotic ET-type host, Levy as a soulless agent, John Michael Higgins as an out-of-touch studio publicist and Jennifer Coolidge as a dim producer.
Next to Borat, For Your Consideration got the biggest laughs at the Toronto filmfest. The laughs are earned.
BOTTOM LINE: There are flaws in this latest, welcome instalment from the Christopher Guest rep company -- the jettisoning of the "mockumentary" format, the overspoofed theme, and the age-appropriateness of the cast (25 is middle aged in Hollywood after all). But hilarity and heart shine through, particularly in the performance of Catherine O'Hara as an aging diva whose dead eyes come aiive in the face of naive hope.
(This film is rated PG)
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