Interview. Eugene Levy and Christopher Guest.

The film is For Your Consideration, the inteviewees are director Christopher Guest and co-writer and star Eugene Levy, the interviewer is John Kovacevich and the format is, appropriately, fun. Consider this an online viewing tip and enjoy.

Related: The film "may take place in Los Angeles, but its imaginative provenance lies somewhere between the la-la lands of Entourage and Mulholland Dr," writes Nathan Lee in the Village Voice. "Hoopla in Hollywood isn't the real subject here, merely the pretext for another oddball ode to lovable losers."

"The good news," announces New York's David Edelstein, "is that For Your Consideration gooses you even in its barren patches and gets fresher and funnier as it goes along. It builds to a shriekingly funny (and scary) revelation and a dénouement so brilliant it's almost demonic. And the movie must be seen for Catherine O'Hara, who has never been so physically daring and emotionally open."

Updated through 11/19.

"[T]he picture is casual and good-natured, and it grooves on the same kind of brainy absurdity that the earlier pictures did," finds Salon's Stephanie Zacharek.

"For Your Consideration is by far the broadest comedy Mr Guest and company have made," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Despite its merriment, it is also the flimsiest."

"Christopher Guest indulges the very vainglory and networking smarminess he should be exposing," complains Armond White in the New York Press.

Vadim Rizov for the Reeler: "Claims that this is "insider" humor are nonsense: everyone knows that the tropes that agents are slimeballs, PR people shallow, actors vain, directors neurotic, writers protective and shy. It's the same comic principle that instantly damn cinematic portrayals of lawyers, used car salesman and insurance agents; For Your Consideration is doomed to sitcom purgatory within minutes of its beginning."

Jim Emerson disagrees at RogerEbert.com: "The movie features some big laughs, a lot of modest ones, and performances so exquisitely fresh and precise that they make laughter almost irrelevant - in a way that only genius can."

Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times: "It's funny in parts but not half as inspired as past efforts."

"It's not a problem in and of itself that Guest's latest movie is not a fake documentary, but it is emblematic of its larger flaw: a total lack of authenticity," finds Matt Singer at IFC News. What's more, "At just 85 minutes, there just isn't enough time for most of Guest's cast to make an impression, much less a meaningful contribution."

"[T]he troupe's efforts feel dispersed and imbalanced this time," writes Nicolas Rapold for the L Magazine, "the film's rhythms not as effortlessly maintained."

Nick Schager: "The omnipresent sense of having already been here and done this... permeates For Your Consideration, a feeling only accentuated by unfunny anachronistic jokes about stuffy Old Hollywood melodramas and people not knowing what the Internet is."

For the LA CityBeat, Andy Klein talks with Guest and much of his ensemble.

Updates, 11/19: Ray Pride: "I don't like Christopher Guest's movies, the bitterness of which feels largely curdled and glib. For Your Consideration may be his lamest effort yet, a malnourished small wean, but it does have the courage of its cruelty."

"A safe and silly comedy from Christopher Guest and gang," writes Jürgen Fauth, "a less satisfying film than usual."

Online listening tip. A podcast at the Reeler.

Posted by dwhudson at November 18, 2006 12:02 PM