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Fitfully hilarious but so much less than the sum of its parts, Christopher Guest's post-mockumentary take on the awards-season vanity derby is redundant and catastrophically wide of the mark. Recycling Eugene Levy's borscht-belt schitck from Waiting for Guffman, Guest plays the Noo Yawk director of Home for Purim, a Hallmark Hall of Fame-level melodrama that improbably acquires Oscar buzz courtesy of a mystery blogger. Catherine O'Hara plays her touted potential nominee as a de-glamorized, Botox-mutliated Norma Desmond, a comic caricature who thinks she's a tragic heroine. Unlike Guest's previous affectionate satires, Consideration has the knives out for its subjects; describing his self-important C-lister at the Toronto Film Fest, Harry Shearer explained, "I took myself, and removed all the parts I like." The movie's most fleetingly glimpsed characters make the strongest impression, particularly ace-in-the-hole Fred Willard's acid embodiment of a cluelessly fauxhawked TV host. Willard's is also one of a few characters who seem to have been taken from the present day; the rest of the movie's targets - clueless publicists, vain producers - are distressingly generic, and far too vague to draw blood in the era of Access Hollywood and Entourage. —Sam Adams

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