Saw "For Your Consideration" the other day. I'm of two minds about the whole Christopher Guest parody movies - on one hand, each is in a lot of ways a rehash of the last, and I never find myself laughing out loud a whole bunch - in addition, sometimes the patheticness (definitely not a word) of the characters just makes it difficult to watch, and unlike the British "The Office" (except for it's most unwatchable moments), not all that funny. A lot of times the movies try to be too cute, and in addition to unwatchable, the characters are just obnoxious.

On the other hand, each of the movies have at least a few great scenes, and with twenty or so characters in each, you're bound to hit on a few good ones in each movie - particularly Fred Willard who is always a highlight. They're also short and to the point which I appreciate, and the don't dilly-dally - there's some bad jokes and scenes they don't work - but there's no filler scenes that just don't even attempt to make jokes, I can watch it at least once to at least see the highlights.

Going from that, I was actually pleasantly surprised by "For Your Consideration." The movie recieved far less critical praise than these Christopher Guest movies often do; perhaps a symptom of people tiring of the concept. However, while pretty much everything I described above was present in these movies, the positives for the most part outweighted the negatives. I was quite incorrect in what I had thought the movie was about - in my mind, it was about a group of people who had filmed a small art-house type picture trying to sell it at a film festival and gain critical acclaim and the hijinks that would accompany that. However, the movie is really a hodgepodge of first, filming bits of the movie, with of course interviews of the cast members, followed by the business talk involving the release of the movie, and leading into Oscar Buzz for the film, interrupted several times by an Entertainment Tonight-like show hosted by Fred Willard and Jane Lynch. Again, as mentioned above Fred Willard was a highlight. For some reason I found Harry Shearer's voice amusing, but I think that's because it just reminded me of Kent Brockman. Catherine O'Hara plays one of the leads on the film, whose ego gets a boost from the initial buzz, and Parker Posey plays the other female star - one of the best bits of the film involves Posey performing her one-woman show "No Penis Intended."

There's pretty much it. Certainly not a great movie, probably not even a very good one, but an enjoyable, fun movie.

"For Your Consideration" 6.7