"It's obviously inherently funnier to have in a comedy someone who isn't doing something very well. That is the basis of most comedy. If you're showing people where it's smooth sailing, where is the joke? If you go back to any movie, even a conventional movie, with any comedians, they're either not terribly intelligent or they're not doing something well." - Christopher Guest (Interviewed by Scott Dikkers, Onion AV Club 2/26/97)FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION (Dir. Christopher Guest)
While I agreed with many folk that the ensemble Christopher Guest comedy revue film peaked with BEST IN SHOW, I have to say that I really adored A MIGHTY WIND. The formula in that folk music re-union show premise was transparent but the songs were catchy as Hell, the back stories convincing, and there were many genuine laugh out loud moments throughout. I hate to
report that Guest's newest FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION is plainly one too many trips to the well. Though the mocumentary angle is discarded the same large cast is here with Ricky Gervais (The Office, Extras) thankfully being among the few new additions to the cast.This time out these folks are the actors, makers, and producers of a small indie movie "Home For Purim" who are given delusions of grandeur when the word of a few internet pundits speak of Oscar buzz. This really goes to the heads of the lead actors - Catherine Ohara particularly (unfortunately and way too obviously she's named Marilyn Hack). Her co-stars Harry Shearer and Parker Posey also freak out at the prospect of the lure of the award while the hilarity that was promised to ensue hides like a murder suspect.
It's not just that the plot revolves around such predictably desperate for fame fools - it actually hurts that the jokes (and I know the cast improvised most of them) are all over 5 years out of date - "the internet, that's the one with email -right?" All the talk of hype online and never does the word 'blogger' come up. The publicity junket stuff that makes up the last third of the movie - which includes parodies of Access Hollywood, The Charlie Rose Show and D-list informercial appearances (infomercials? Make that over 10 years out of date) is in this age of reality shows, round the clock docs, and endless coverage of every miniscule media moment is tediously tired turf here already done to death nightly on any number of Comedy Central, VH1, E! or Adult Swim projects.
The characters in THIS IS SPINAL TAP, WAITING FOR GUFFMAN, BEST IN SHOW, and A MIGHTY WIND had an undeniable sadness about them but as satirical statements they were as funny as movie personas can get. In FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION these people are just sad. It's just sad that Guest and his reperatory company are such terribly intelligent funny people who this time out are not doing something well.
Please let this be the swan song of these movies!Or at the very least spare us another wacky Fred Willard hair-do!
More later...
