You can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater because then all you have is a wet, critically injured baby.

Reuniting virtually all of the personnel from Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration is a middling Hollywood comedy that trods familiar ground and never quite gets its comedic feet under it. Once again, as in A Mighty Wind, co-writer and director Christopher Guest’s affection for his characters undermines the potential for humor. The subject of Oscar hype in Hollywood might be ripe for scathing satire, but all this movie can manage is a softball thrown underhand.

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This is your fucked-up country, it’s your responsibility!

Babel, the third and probably final collaboration between director Alejandro González Iñárritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga, is a well-acted, beautifully shot film that somehow manages to hold you at arm’s length for more than two hours. It is frustrating because you do want to know these characters better but the movie never lets you get close enough.

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