For Your Consideration - Directed by Christopher Guest

[Sonic Youth]

For Your Consideration

By EDDIE COCKRELL
Variety

Ten years into a collaboration that has produced the well-received mockumentaries "Waiting for Guffman," "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind," Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy shed the gimmick and tackle the bizzers among whom they live and work in almost surreally fast-paced, film-within-a-film narrative laffer "For Your Consideration." The story of a supposedly prestige film production comically roiled by rumors of kudos buzz, the pic is too heavy on ethnic humor and industry in-jokes to attract many in flyover territory, but will garner more than enough critical huzzahs from those it lampoons to incrementally broaden the duo's ever-growing fan base in theatrical and fiercely cultish ancillary.

Wisely abandoning the mockumentary approach they'd taken about as far as it could feasibly go, Guest and Levy have expanded their rep company of players and utilized an obviously larger budget to significantly widen the net of their cultural satire in snugly-cut narrative form. Crucially, they've preserved an anarchic, zinger-fueled wit that works chiefly because they continue to simultaneously embrace and condemn the cruel superficiality of their self-absorbed losers.

Though she's endured the business for more than three decades, actress Marilyn Hack (Catherine O'Hara) still isn't recognized when she drives up to the front gates of the studio. She's there starring as dying southern matriarch Esther Pischer in a low-budget drama called "Home for Purim" opposite Victor Allan Miller (Harry Shearer), who sees the role as a chance to escape his typecasting as Irv the Footlong Weiner in a series of popular tube spots.

The crew of "Home for Purim" and the industry hangers-on are about par for the Tinseltown course: insecure, suspicious tonsorial train wrecks with laughably trendy wardrobes. There's the relentlessly cheery makeup guy, Sandy Lane (Ed Begley, Jr.); Miller's distracted agent Morley Orfkin (Levy); non-sequitur-spouting P.R. flack Corey Taft (John Michael Higgins); bland, middle-aged helmer Jay Berman (Guest); EPK producer Pam Campanella (Carrie Aizley); breathtakingly dim producer Whitney Taylor Brown (Jennifer Coolidge); and mismatched screenwriting duo Philip Koontz (Bob Balaban) and Lane Iverson (Michael McKean).

One day on the set, Brit d.p. Simon Whitset (Jim Piddock) lets slip to Marilyn that an Internet site has speculated her perf may be worthy of that little gold statue. She's soon told Miller, as well as co-stars Callie Webb (Parker Posey) and Brian Chubb (Christopher Moynihan) -- whose offscreen relationship seems strained -- and Debbie Gilchrist (Rachael Harris), a humorless Method type who plays Callie's gay lover Mary Pat Hooligan in the film.

Soon the rumor has leaked to a series of contempo entertainment programs, caricatured with spot-on-precision. Chief among them is "Entertainment Now," co-hosted by terminally perky and sharp-tongued duo Cindy Martin (Jane Lynch) and Chuck Porter (Fred Willard, here sporting a fluffy blonde Mohawk).

The media buzz, in turn, attracts the attention of smarmy Sunfish Classics prez Martin Gibb (Ricky Gervais) and his jumpy assistant, Syd Finkleman (Larry Miller), whose boutique distribbery is interested in acquiring the film -- with maybe just a few script changes. Renamed "Home for Thanksgiving," pic gets raves from a pair of bickering tube crix (Don Lake, Michael Hitchcock). Can the coveted noms be far behind?

The overarching joke here is that "Home for Purim" is terrible -- and nobody really seems to care, or even notice. As did the small-town theater company in "Guffman," even the hint of validation is enough to spur these oddballs on.Entire company is in top form. Rep company newcomer Gervais has a priceless few moments discussing restaurants with Coolidge, while Shearer's character sums up the pic's main theme: "Oscar is the backbone of this industry, an industry not known for backbone." Little-known thesps Deborah Theaker and Scott Williamson, who between them have been in almost all of Guest's directorial efforts, are given incrementally larger roles here as Marilyn's pal and a morning talkshow host, respectively.

If there's a whisper of disappointment, it's in the promise of O'Hara's touchingly conflicted Marilyn; though the actress bravely performs a good part of the film in a fake botox treatment that can't mask her pain, the role feels underwritten -- particularly as O'Hara cedes face time to a huge supporting cast that includes various thesps doing one-off-cameos as themselves.

Tech package is marked by a TV-like glare, which is also spoofed by Guest: asked for more light on the set, Piddock's lenser complains, "Its brighter than Stephen Hawking in here." Warner Independent Pictures plans a Nov. 17 rollout in some 40 U.S. markets, expanding the run a week later; aiming to capitalize, no doubt, on holiday buzz for awards season.