Not So Best of Show

For Your Consideration. Christopher Guest, Eugene
Levy, Fred Willard, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, and Harry
Shearer star in a film written by Levy and Guest, and directed by
Guest.

Reviewed by Josef Woodard

Seemingly against all odds, Christopher Guest and gang have
pieced together a signature cottage industry during the past two
decades, in which celluloid improv and satirical incisors add up to
a peculiar and very specific kind of cine-magic. But the problem
with magic tricks is their fragility: one dazzling trick makes a
lesser one — like the Hollywood send-up For Your
Consideration — appear sad and wanting.

This is not Spinal Tap. But it’s ironic that Guest’s company has
the least comic firepower on the theme closest to home for an
ensemble which makes its living in the acting game. Maybe the
pretensions and built-in absurdities of the worlds of heavy metal
(This Is Spinal Tap), community theater (Waiting for Guffman), and
dog shows (Best in Show) are fairer game, whereas irrational
Hollywood is just too close to home for the objective distance
necessary for a good satirist. It’s a parallax issue.