For Your Consideration

At first, it just sounds too good to be true. But as rumors persist that the independent film Home for Purim is generating Oscar buzz, the entire cast and crew—triumphs of mediocrity, each and every one of them—slowly begin to unravel. Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries are always good for an evening of belly laughs, although his acerbic wit seems to have evaporated in his last two films and been replaced by mawkish sentiment. With For Your Consideration, Guest is back in form, skewering a subject well worth roasting: Hollywood and its obsession with self-congratulation. He has rounded up his crew of stalwarts—Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Eugene Levy, and the brave Parker Posey—and brings in Ricky Gervais, creator of The Office, who could raise the embarrassment level to new highs—or drop it to new lows, depending on your outlook.