Review: "For Your Consideration"

Haha, okay, we get it. Actors are pretentious whores, Hollywood sucks your soul away, blah blah waah haha we get it move on. 

Christopher Guest's latest cinematic offering, "For Your Consideration" (2006), is a heavy handed, groan-inducing, inside joke about the film industry. Like his previous films, it is cast with a familiar ensemble of comedy actors and relies greatly upon improvisation. But, unlike those films, this one fails to be good or even very funny. In all his films, Guest lays everything on the skeleton of his improv troupe, but here the bones are brittle, and the whole thing collapses. It is really sort of painful to watch these usually gifted actors struggle and grasp to make things funny. There is nothing here beyond the concept that the film industry is a constant and supposedly hilarious battle between artistic integrity and commercial viability. Things never focus. There is no chance for the characters to have much depth. 

One thing that might throw viewers familiar with Guest's previous films is that this is not actually a foux-documentary. Similarly, we are let down because he has set the bar so high.

SPOILER ALERT: We are here going to relate the funniest... no, make that the only funny part of "For Your Consideration". It is a line uttered by Fred Willard (pictured), and goes like this, "You know what they say about blind prostitutes. You really have to hand it to them." There, the only funny line in the whole movie. We have just saved you 86 minutes of improv comedy at its worst.