People are voting emotionally.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Jay Berman (Christopher Guest) is directing his movie "Home for Purim". Philip Koontz (Bob Balaban) and Lane Iverson (Michael McKean) are the writers. Whitney Taylor Brown (Jennifer Coolidge) is the producer with diaper money. Marilyn Hack (Catherine O'Hara), Victor Allan Miller (Harry Shearer), Callie Webb (Parker Posey), Debbie Gilchrist (Rachael Harris), and Brian Chubb (Christopher Moynihan) are some of the actors. None of them are big stars. Morley Orfkin (Eugene Levy) is a small time agent. A rumor spreads that one of the actors is getting Oscar buzz. Corey Taft (John Michael Higgins) is an incompetent publicist.The great thing about Christopher Guest mockumentaries is that he takes characters from little known worlds and make them stars. The problem with this one is that these Hollywood characters have been done by everybody. The familiar cast of players are unable to get big laughs. It is a valiant effort. This is good for Guest fans but a limited comedy for non fans.

Catherine O'Hara and Harry Shearer plumb surprising emotional depths in their tender portrayals of past-their-sell-by-date stars in Christopher Guest's comedic ensemble parody For Your Consideration. Co-written by Eugene Levy, FYC is supposed to be a film that skewers Hollywood's award-ceremony-industrial complex, and it does, but it is also Guest's most character-focused film.O'Hara and Shearer portray veteran actors of less than distinguished service who find 'one last great chance' to earn the admiration of their peers once they are cast as leads in an ill-starred, oft- rewritten 'small' film directed by the estimable Jay Berman (Guest), "Home for Purim."The rest of the ever-expanding players in Guest's company of parodic itinerants, from Ed Begley, Jr. to Bob Balaban, to Jane Lynch and Michael McKean, surround and fill in the rest of "Purim's" cast, crew, publicists, grips, accountants, celebrity interviewers, security guards, and gawkers. This is a film about a film after all, and Guest and Levy omit no mockable trade in their fictional movie production and marketing process.But O'Hara and Shearer get most of the quality screen time, and they do not waste a moment of it. The sweetness at the bottom of the film's pie is their characters' comedically haunted, grasping, chin up with watering eyes anticipation that, by the end of this particular grind, they'll have arrived as the real stars they've always known themselves to be. The success of their focused performance, and of Guest and Levy's decision to let them carry so much of the film's load, arrives when it occurs to the viewer, through the laughs about Hollywood and its prissy foible-y emotional excess, that what haunts these two actors is the same fear and yearning that, at some point in life, runs through us all.

In trying to get at the heart of why this film is merely good, not hilarious, I think that an over-reliance on improvisation is at fault. In a mockumentary, such rough moments can be 'disguised' as byproducts of the faux reality, whereas in a straight film like this they cannot. A good example is provided by John Michael Higgins as Corey Taft, the stolid agent for Marilyn Hack. While he's got a few good scenes, too many of his obnoxious to the core character simply is stuff seen done better before. And he suffers in contrast to Levy's character, Morley Orfkin, agent to Victor Allen Miller. The same goes for Ed Begley Jr.'s tired and routine gay makeup man character, Sandy Lane. Also, some of the same old tired in-jokes and stereotypes about Hollywood abound. If only two or three were used, rather than fifteen or twenty, the film would have been better off, and the balance would have aided the true pathos of the film. In that sense, this film was a bit lesser version of David Mamet's State And Main crossed with Robert Altman's The Player.Yet, despite all that, this film is, in truth, a good adult comedy, and given that they are so rare, its flaws are minor in comparison to its good points. Compare it to the latest black or teen exploitation comedy and you'll agree. For Your Consideration may not, itself, be worthy of consideration for an Academy Award, but it may stand out as a critical film in the continued evolution of one of American film's most original and funny filmic auteurs. La chaim!

Another amusing Christopher Guest mockumentary, this time set in Hollywood and targeting the hoopla and absurdity surrounding the Oscar's and promise of a nomination. It took me a little while to warm up to this one, but eventually I got into it and it had some pretty funny moments. It is really quite clever in places, and it's probably not that much of a stretch that a small movie and those involved could be swept up in the rumors of possible Academy Awards in such an extreme manner. The usual Guest regulars are all here, and so is his particular sense of humor that you either get, or you don't. It's a safe bet that you'll probably like For Your Consideration about as much as you liked other Guest movies like Best in Show. Manage your expectations accordingly.