The Big Picture

One of the smartest and funniest films of the year, at least for those who care about its subject. Every regular filmgoer should. Through the story of a talented but naive film school graduate (Kevin Bacon`s Nick Chapman) who suddenly becomes the hottest property in Hollywood, Guest assembles a deadly accurate sociology of the contemporary film industry-and its accuracy makes The Big Picture both hilarious and terrifying.

The Big Picture is a surprisingly genial, good-natured satire on contemporary Hollywood mores.

The Big Picture, the first theatrical film to be directed by the talented Christopher Guest (a co-writer and a star of ''This Is Spinal Tap), is a consistently genial, intermittently funny send-up of the current Hollywood scene as demonstrated by the rise and fall of an award-winning film student.

With the broad satiric hands of Christopher Guest and Michael McKean as two of the screenplay authors (Michael Varhol is the other), and Guest as director, there are overtones of This Is Spinal Tap, although the final result is less successful. The spoof of Hollywood manners, morals, talent and success hits with some real humor. [15 Dec 1989, p.3F]

When Short is onscreen, a movie that provides only fitful laughter bubbles over into bliss.

If you're a movie buff, The Big Picture will be hilarious. If you're not, it should be revealing. [01 Dec 1989, p.G8]

The Big Picture is a failed attempt to spoof the wheelers and dealers behind the scenes in Hollywood. Christopher Guest, who directed and cowrote this diatribe against the inanities of the studio system, has created what amounts to no more than a series of sketches that would probably work better on television than in this prolonged, belabored movie.