WAITING FOR GUFFMAN is my favorite movie of all time, so any new project from Christopher Guest has very big shoes to fill. But this one is so busy being pleased with itself that it doesn't even try.<br /><br />It starts very, very well indeed. In fact, there were times that it seemed as if the script were being written with me in mind as viewer and the heck with everybody else. But then it starts to go off the tracks.<br /><br />The centerpiece here is the filming of an independent film called HOME FOR PURIM about a Jewish family in the American South in the 1940's. The premise for the film within the film has struck some reviewers as preposterous, but let's remember that this month a major studio released a romantic comedy starring Russell Crowe so we're assured that stupidity is the one thing that there's a limitless supply of.<br /><br />The scenes from HOME FOR PURIM that we see are wretched (strike one) but somehow buzz arises on the internet that the film is Oscar worthy. Incredibly enough the majority of characters in the story are clueless about what the internet is or how it operates even though the story seemingly takes place in 2006 (strike two).<br /><br />The buzz builds to the point where the Evil Studio Executives take over the film and decide to "tone down" the Jewishness and it becomes HOME FOR THANKSGIVING, thus robbing the film of what little subtext it had.<br /><br />MAJOR SPOILER ALERT.<br /><br />YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.<br /><br />Nobody connected with HOME FOR THANKSGIVING gets nominated for anything. And it's here that the screenplay turns, for want of a better word, nasty. There's a bitterness in the final scenes that just left a bad taste in my mouth.<br /><br />This is the kind of movie that comes out every once in a while that seems to have been made for a specific purpose- to assure the people who stayed on the farm in Nebraska or wherever that they didn't miss a thing by not having moved to Los Angeles. It tells us that there are people in Hollywhood who have big egos and are deceitful. Oh my God, no! I never dreamed such a thing. Next thing I know the National Geographic will tell me the world is round, or maybe Popular Science will tell me water is wet.<br /><br />I would say that I'm very forgiving and will be there opening weekend for Guest and company's next movie. But at the showing I went to there were a grand total of five people in the audience counting myself. Maybe the buzz has gotten out on this one and it's not good. Despite what the movie presents, pretty much everyone in America over the age of eight does know how to use the internet.