REEL CRITICS:Characters a bit too pitiful to laugh at

“For Your Consideration” was a surprising letdown.

I’m a big fan of writer and actor Christopher Guest’s work, particularly “Best in Show” and “This Is Spinal Tap.” His mockdocumentary parodies are dead-on and sweetly hilarious. I’m at a loss to figure out why this latest spoof about Hollywood’s obsession with Oscars fails to generate more than sporadic chuckles.

The regular troupe of actors are no slouches — Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Harry Shearer, Parker Posey and Jennifer Coolidge to name just a few — and usually manage to make their largely improvised roles shine.

The plot centers around a movie within the movie, “Home for Purim,” a low-budget, period soap opera with O’Hara, Shearer and Posey as the veteran B-list stars. An Internet rumor begins to circulate during filming about their Oscar-worthy performances, and that sweet smell of success turns the cast and production upside down.

O’Hara is very good as Marilyn Hack, who undergoes a sad but funny transformation once she starts making the talk-show circuit to promote her film.

Bob Balaban and Michael McKean play screenwriters who are astounded when a studio executive suggests they lessen the “Jewishness” of their movie to ensure more people will see it.

But the screen only really comes alive when the irrepressible Fred Willard and Jane Lynch are on screen. Playing the insanely perky hosts of an “Entertainment Tonight”-style show, they attack their roles with absurd glee.

There are a few clever gags, but also a lot more pathos than humor. In the past, many of Guest’s characters have been losers, yet they remained blissfully undefeated. Perhaps what’s needed here is a little more optimism and less “Sunset Boulevard.”

Put on thinking caps for complex ‘Deja Vu’

Director Tony Scott’s credentials for formula action films goes all the way back to “Top Gun” and “Crimson Tide.” But his work in the ultra-violent “Man on Fire” starring Denzel Washington really sets the stage for this effort. In “Deja Vu” he brings Denzel back to the center of a gritty and complex crime thriller with science fiction overtones. It will startle and confuse viewers in equal measure.

Denzel plays a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent investigating a terrorist bombing that kills 524 people on a New Orleans ferry. He is thrust into a special federal unit with access to secret technology. The unit’s agents can bend space and time to offer a limited view into the recent past. Denzel is able to “see” events around the city that occurred up to four days before the bombing. As he watches the 3-D screens he begins to wonder if he can do something to influence the past events he sees unfolding.

Eventually, the screenplay unveils plot devices involving time travel and alternate realities that take this techno thriller to a new level of strangeness. And yet the plot contains enough realistic police procedural to keep the story grounded.

Denzel Washington, Val Kilmer and the stunning Paula Patton provide the gravitas that gives credibility to the bizarre developments.

If you can suspend belief and go along for the ride you’ll see a real mix of Hollywood genres with even a little romance thrown in. You might call this “Minority Report” meets “Memento” on the way “Back to the Future.”