For Your Consideration (2006): C

Familiarity often breeds not only contempt but also boredom. That’s certainly the case with regards to the work of Christopher Guest, who continues to mine the multi-character mockumentary for ever-diminishing returns. True, the director’s latest, For Your Consideration – which takes aim at the movie biz and the infotainment culture that surrounds it – doesn’t technically utilize a phony non-fiction format. But it’s nonetheless Guest’s same old routine dressed up with a few more camera set-ups-per-scene and a smaller number of improvised moments, replete with his trademark cast of performers (including, aside from the many newcomers, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Harry Shearer, John Michael Higgens, Fred Willard, Parker Posey, Bob Balaban, Michael McKean and Jennifer Coolidge) embodying minor variations on the outcast character types that have come to define their Guest collaborations. Thus, in this scattershot, stereotype-skewering story about the making of an old-fashioned weepy called “Home for Purim” and the award buzz that builds for its stars, Coolidge is the ditzy movie producer, Balaban is the neurotic screenwriter, O’Hara is the awkward but sympathetic actress, and Fred Willard – sporting a blond fauxhawk as the anchor of an Access Hollywood-type program – is the boob prone to utter random, offensive comments. At least the film’s subject is riper for satire than the folk music industry targeted by 2003’s dreary A Mighty Wind. And considering how many one-liners are lobbed, it’s no surprise that a handful – mostly from the reliably hilarious Willard – hit their mark. The omnipresent sense of having already been here and done this, however, 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.