For your consideration
Guest and cast score again in this one.
Following the success of Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, Christopher Guest’s new film was for me, even funnier. It departs from the mockumentary format into straight narrative , but the characters behave in the usual Guest manner, playing everything in deadly seriousness.
Subject is the Hollywood rumour mill and how it affects the director and cast of one of the most god-awful films ever conceived. The film-within-a film, titled Home for Purim, is the unimaginably trite story of a Jewish family of four in small-town USA. Mom and Dad and sailor brother hope that errant daughter will come home for the Purim festival.
What happens to the director (Eugene Levy) and cast as the rumour mill picks up the crazy notion that Home for Purim is destined for Oscar nomination remains completely in the spirit of other Guest movies.
Catherine O’Hara plays a long neglected character actress who’s finally given a break. Her personality change from anxious has-been hoping to get the part of the mother to preening “look-at-me-now” Oscar hopeful is a wonder to behold. As the rumours grow, the producer, director and principal actors all become consumed by self-delusion. Harry Shearer, Parker Posey, Fred Willard and Guest himself once again give us complete characterizations.
And as always, there’s a surprise ending. Guest’s transition from the mockumentary to straight narrative loses nothing of his sense of absurd deadpan comedy.