So sad to write this review. I love some Christopher Guest movies and like most, but I just couldn't get through this one. I was actually shocked by how much I disliked it when it's got all his standard players in it (all of who I also love).I hung in there for 45 minutes hoping my impression would change. But it just didn't do it for me and made me feel a little annoyed that I'd wasted that much time on it. I've never rated a movie 2-stars & applaud all creative efforts. Others gave it 10-stars, so it's all subjective. Just a bummer for me to be so disappointed.

*Spoiler/plot- 2006, A small Jewish themed film (the film "Home for Purim," a drama set in the mid-1940s American South) is being made in Hollywood and production problems come alone the way that need to be solved creatively.*Special Stars- Catherine O'hara, Ed Bagley Jr, Eugene Levy, Harry Shearer, Bob Balaban, Michael McKean, Fred Ward, Jane Lynch, Christopher Guest, Rachael Harris, Carrie Aizley, Jennifer Coolidge*Theme- Hollywood film business is a crazy impressionable system.*Trivia/location/goofs- The first of this comedy acting groups ensemble cast's films to follow with many more mainstream feature films. Film is made in Hollywood on studio lots.*Emotion- An enjoyable but rather crazy look at things from Hollywood. Actors to the press are explored in a funny way with a small amount of truth to make these things strike home with the film's audience. Demonstrates the production of a feature film in Hollywood with comedic aspects showing the flawed human system that is movie making.

I know it's hard to find a movie with the 2 qualities, but this one has them both finely. It's a wonderful movie about living the false dream of just "nominating" for the Oscar. With 2 veteran has-been (or never-been) actors, and one newcomer, we follow the dream that nearly turns into nightmare. It succeeds in being not only a movie about bunch of actors, but also a movie about the backstage of shooting a movie, the agents, the scriptwriters, the producing, and the media as well. It does a good satirical job with all of them. So what's here to be satirized? A lot. The ignorance. The lack of opportunities for old actors in Hollywood. The fake glamour; where the botox and the plastic surgeries do the job to make the actors younger and freaky (the examples in Hollywood are endless nowadays !). The shallowness, the silliness, and the brazenness of the media, with great take on the tabloid shows that need nothing but sensationalism (at one point an announcer declares that the only thing he cares for in a movie is the nude scenes !). And yes, a sneer at the Oscar (the way the movie within the movie was acted was horrible to laughable extent) along with whoever dreams of it; notice well how the only one who didn't dream of it was the one who got nominated for it ! There is a perfect meaning thrown through the movie; because while these people, the movie's no star characters, try hard in an industry that stands on the star system, and leaves such actors in the bottom alone despite any talent they have, this movie comes to say that these people themselves, the movie's characters and their performers, CAN make a movie without The Star, and make it work, being together a big star apart. It's like (For Your Consideration) you the producers of Hollywood ! As for the shortcomings, it lacked the deep penetration into the characters; for instance we knew nothing about the special life of Marilyn Hack (the character played by Catherine O'Hara). Maybe most of the acting, in the movie within the movie, said how pathetic these actors are, while I thought that it would have been stronger if it told us how they are really good, being treated unfairly by always bad circumstances. As if the desperate way to make laughs disappointed a good issue there. Moreover, the end didn't click well. I couldn't understand the matter of the "mole" or the metaphor in it. Anyhow, that very scene didn't wind up things rightly. And finally, the character of the director (played by the movie's real director Christopher Guest) was the least interesting one in the movie, rather uninteresting. I don't know why he, as a co-writer, didn't make it at least funny. All in all, it is not a black comedy inasmuch as talking about black reality. However it leaves you with a powerful sense of bitterness just like a distinct black comedy. The face of (Catherine O'Hara), fine actress by the way, looking deformed by plastic surgeries during the last 20 minutes, sums up this movie's mix; as a comedy mixed with painful case of a human in a crises. Strange mix but highly effective.

The movie was funny at times, but it wasn't written very well. It seemed to rely on the old improvisational skills of the actors to pull it together. There's a lot of timely press jokes that the actors go through (Harry Shearer on a TRL-esquire after-school hip program trying to be cool, and the hilarious scene of Catherine O'Hara revealing a new face-lift on national TV on a late night talk show), which are pretty much the funniest parts of the movie. Jane Lynch and Fred Willard as entertainment news-show hosts was a delight, especially when Fred went on the street to get reactions of failed actors after not getting nominated for an Oscar. And I loved John Michael Higgins' executive character talking about his Choctaw heritage.There wasn't much more to this movie, though. OK, the setting of the movie is non-traditionally based on a Jewish holiday, which gets changed to a more Americanized title. Then the cliché characters of the dying mother and lesbian sister, OK. It just wasn't very remarkable in the end. Again, no real music in the movie, which I have a problem with just to ease out of constant interviews with the actors in Guest's movies. But whatever, it's better than average, and another welcomed try by Christopher Guest at the perfect improv movie, but it's starting to get a little played-out.