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I saw For Your Consideration this weekend as well as Deja Vu. While I enjoyed the latest from Christopher Guest, I didn't find the film nearly as funny or nearly as interesting as much of his previous work (A Mighty Wind excluded, perhaps). I don't know what it was, because I expected the film to be very funny. Maybe that was the problem. Guest, himself playing a director of a very bad film with Oscar buzz is good and so is Catherine O'Hara, but the rest of the troupe doesn't seem to find it. Too much time is spent acting out this terrible movie (first titled Home for Purim and later re-written as Home for Thanksgiving so as to appeal to mainstream Oscar voters) and not enough time is spent in the doucmentary-styled testimonials which have made Guest's films so funny in the past. Don't count out O'Hara for a best supporting nod, but don't necessarily count her in either.
Deja Vu was a two hour joy ride with Denzel Washington. The film is fun and it makes you think. It's out there, but the concept is purely original. Washington re-teams with Tony Scott. The two previously made Man on Fire. If you enjoyed that film, I think you will enjoy this one.
Oh, and I still think David Denby's commentary on Bobby in the New Yorker is way off base.
. . . Robert Kennedy was fascinating, yet there’s something peculiarly naïve and even desperate about clinging to the tentative possibilities that he held out as the quality of hope that has eluded us for almost forty years.
The guy just doesn't get it.
