For Your Consideration (12A)

Dir: Christopher Guest, USA, 86mins
Cast: Catherine O’Hara, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer

This latest improvised comedy from Christopher Guest and co-writer Eugene Levy turns its attention to Hollywood and follows the cast and crew of the low-budget melodrama Home For Purim as they get sucked into the hype machine around Oscar season. As the expectation grows, the studio starts re-shaping the film for a mainstream audience and nobody is immune from the Oscar bug, not least the nominated actors (Shearer and O’Hara). Whereas previous Guest films have explored weird side cultures (dog shows in Best In Show (2000) and amateur theatre in Waiting For Guffman (1996)) this latest offering seems like an attempt to bring the Guest/Levy formula into the mainstream.

And herein lies the problem, because For Your Consideration lacks the freshness and innovation of its forebears. Moving away from the documentary format used in the previous films puts the movie in a strange position and somehow the nuts and bolts of the film – cutting, pacing and transitions – become more intrusive than the faux-verite style of old. Somehow, by becoming a ‘proper movie’ the film loses some of the charm and intimacy that previous Guest/Levy films had in spades. Another problem is the swollen rank of actors eager to join in on the bandwagon. Where previous films relied on a small cast of hugely talented improvisional players, we now have a large number of passable ones and many scenes feel rushed in order to give each person their moment in the spotlight. This is best illustrated by that addition of Ricky Gervais to the cast, who seems very pleased to be there, but adds only a re-hashed David Brent to the proceedings.

This is not to say that For Your Consideration is a total disaster, as there are a few shining moments of comedy. The sight of arch-improviser Michael McKean as a disgruntled scriptwriter bemoaning the director’s decision to throw away the script has a certain keen irony to it and John Michael Higgins has several of the film’s best lines (“In every actor there lives a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. You never know which one’s going to come out.”). In terms of acting range, Catherine O’Hara is probably the stand-out member of the cast and her transformation into a surgery-addicted freak is equally amusing and affecting. But these positives are not enough to overcome the film’s key problem, in that it lacks focus and at times feels as if it’s nothing more than an extended theatre workshop.

The production notes state that Levy and Guest are planning each subsequent movie in more and more detail and perhaps this is the problem. For Your Consideration feels like Guest and Levy’s attempt to establish their working method as a bankable comedy franchise. What once was a genuine alternative to the Hollywood system is now becoming a victim of it.

Tom Alexander