Marc Malkin

Warner Independent Pictures

Christopher Guest's Best in Show is one of my favorite movies. His new For Your Consideration, however, a send-up of awards season and Oscar campaigning in Hollywood, is no Best in Show.

All about the making of a southern Jewish period piece called Home for Purim, Guest's new comedy finds Purim's leading lady, Marilyn Hack (played by Catherine O'Hara), falsely believing the Internet is abuzz with rumors that she's a lock for an Oscar nomination. The fabricated hype soon ropes in the rest of the actors, along with fatuous publicists, agents, managers and studio executives. As much as Guest knows how to skewer Hollywood, this feels like a parody of one of his own movies. It's short on the energy and spontaneity his flicks thrive on.

But not all is lost. Fred Willard and Jane Lynch are golden as the bumbling cohosts of an entertainment show called Hollywood Now. Lynch is dressed in overstylized clothes that are just one step away from being a New Orleans madam. Willard sports an orange tan, has a faux-hawk and wears a diamond stud in one ear. Even the way Lynch stands is spot-on.

Hollywood Now should have been the movie Guest had made.

Another bright spot in the film is Jennifer Coolidge, who rocks. She plays Purim's wealthy, bleach-blond, buxom producer—but for some reason, she isn't on screen nearly enough. Coolidge deserves her own movie to star in. It's long overdue.

One more thing I noticed when I saw the film: Guest's wife, Jamie Lee Curtis, is smokin'. She was at the premiere last night at the DGA, and let me tell you, she is in incredible shape. She wore a formfitting cream dress that showed off her unbelievable physique and long legs. She couldn't have been sweeter. She mingled in the lobby as her husband worked the red carpet, and she appeared to be thanking almost everyone for coming out to support "my man."

Also there last night: Alyssa Milano, Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Rob Reiner, Nora Ephron, Nicholas Pillegi, and Cheryl Hines, along with many of the film's stars, including Coolidge, Lynch, O'Hara, Parker Posey, Eugene Levy, Harry Shearer and Larry Miller.