For Your Consideration, written by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, directed by the former - 9.2 out of 10

For Your Consideration, written by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, directed by the former

9.2 out of 10

This is a miraculous motion picture, though not destined for the Cinematic Hall of Fame, it is fantastic in its elaborate, hilarious, phenomenal team game, with a multitude of talented actors making an outstanding ensemble piece that offers joy and could be the perfect comedy to watch now that we are all sinking like the Titanic – that was a joke, we are not sinking like the infamous big boat, for we are almost all in quasi isolation, house arrest and therefore we would go to the bottom not like a huge team, but individually, like stones…

There are magnificent lines in this superb movie, which is also insightful, sardonic, critical of the arrogant character of so many- if not most of the- celebrities that love themselves so much and demand the most absurd things, envy each other, rise from obscurity on gossip, then fall to the level of petty, silly commercials, just like Victor Allan Miller aka Harry Shearer, who has to jingle some preposterous balls in an ad that promotes one of those phony weight loss procedures, through which you lose fifty kilos in a matter of days, if not minutes, just by fooling around with some small spheres attached to your waist…do not try this at home though

When asked, one character says that ‘actors have inside them some animals, a pig, a nightingale and some others were mentioned and you never know which one you will get’ – reminding this cinephile of the snow storm joke, wherein a man is compared with a snow storm, because for both you never know when it is coming, how many inches you will get and how long it will last’…

There is the argument to be made, if you read the Magnum opus Adventures in the Screen Trade by the majestic and regretted William Goldman, that what For Your Consideration mocks are real excesses of the superstars of Hollywood, for we learn from Adventures in the Screen Trade about how Dustin Hoffman misbehaved on the set of Marathon Runner, subjecting the iconic Laurence Olivier to torture almost, Al Pacino has had his share of more than bravado and finally, Robert Redford has been quite insufferable on plenty of occasions when dealing with the screenplay writer of All the President’s Men – for this and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, William Goldman has won the Academy Awards…

This satire refers also to the often mischievous, sometimes abject role that producers play – Harvey Weinstein comes to mind, though now that he has the Corona virus and he is over sixty, maybe he will be a ghost of the past soon – who take a project and then transform it beyond recognition, against the wishes of those involved in them…

In this case, the project was entitled ‘Home for Purim’ and as the initial tile makes clear, it is about a Jewish family, where the matriarch is very sick, children return to see her – the director is amusing in his instructions…you need to play it like this and what he suggests looks like a ridiculous fit of epilepsy – and then it transforms into something not just different, but a film that has annulled all the initial elements…

A vain, arrogant producer interpreted with gusto and the famous talent by Ricky Gervais objects in front of the writers about the ‘Jewishness’ of the script and says that it is ‘too much in your face’ and thus they need to modify it and ‘tone down’ what is in fact the essence of their work and it demonstrates how absurd and surreal – also funny for the purposes of the satire – relationships can be and how torturing…

Gossip online has it that Marilyn Hack aka excellent Catherine O’Hara is to be nominated for the role she plays in the small Home for Purin, soon to be transformed into Home for Thanksgiving – not just another religion, but one that proclaims some ideas that contradict the initial one, that was at the core of the project…

Jealousy, controversy, petty emotions will be on display frequently and the media is also exposed in its obsession for the futile, the scandalous aspects of movie making and so much else – Fox is one network that goes beyond being superficial, it is outright dangerous in the ascension is helped obtain of the Orange Fool and the peddling of conspiracy theories…some at the start of the new pandemic, when they called it, with their Cult leader, just a hoax…

Two hosts of a popular talk show interview actresses and actors on the set, but they could not be more comical, the man with his outrageous hairdo, the woman with her disinterest in the questions – ‘where have you been hiding? Just kidding, it was rhetorical question and the interviewee has no chance to utter a word – then the male host answers a call on his cellular, just as part of the team is all gathered in front of him, waiting for the ‘reporters’ to do their job…

Other members of the crew have a share, as one is scolded by the rather outlandish director – who eats during filming and has quite a few pompous views – on the matter of the lightning, prompting the lights specialist to retort along the lines of…

‘What do you mean more lights…this set here is brighter that Stephen fucking Hawkins!’