Satirical ‘Simone’ takes shot at movie industry Film gleefully skewers celebrity-obsessed culture

In theaters

SIMONE, written, produced and directed by Andrew Niccol, 100 minutes, PG-13.

In the Hollywood satire “Simone,” Al Pacino is Viktor Taransky, a down-in-the-dumps director of art films who’s eager to go to any lengths to find that perfect star, a talented, undemanding actress willing to follow direction, happy to show up on time for work, and who generally doesn’t behave like a supermodel with a SAG card. Does such a person exist in today’s Hollywood, where overpaid, A-list stars insist upon receiving at least some control over the movies in which they appear? That depends on how you define the word “exist.”

The film, which Andrew Niccol directed and produced from his own script, is essentially “Frankenstein” for 21st century Hollywood, a movie that asks stinging questions about the state of our celebrity-obsessed culture and the Hollywood machine while gleefully skewering both.

The monster in question isn’t the traditional lug with a square head and green skin, but a cool, gorgeous blonde with a wide smile and sun-touched skin. Her name is Simone and she’s fabulous, the new “It” girl, just attractive and soulless enough to be adored by the masses.

The catch? In spite of Simone’s lifelike appearance, she’s little more than a sultry gathering of pixels, the man-made product of a sophisticated computer program Viktor inherits just when he needs it most. Indeed, with his latest film nearly kaput after his star, Nicola Anders (Winona Ryder), quits in a huff, Viktor needs the sort of Hollywood magic Simone offers to help save his picture.

She does more than that. After Viktor secretly and digitally inserts her into those scenes vacated by Nicola, Simone becomes a worldwide sensation, re-energizes Viktor’s career and then nearly sinks it when the world starts begging to see her in the flesh. With Viktor unable to deliver, what ensues is a cynical farce filled with acute observations about the state of the movies that eventually gives way to the sort of formulaic, crowd-pleasing elements Niccol has gone out of his way to trash.

Its ending is absurdly pat and uplifting, almost an intrusion, but whether that’s because Niccol wanted to end with his sharpest comment on Hollywood, which can’t help itself from generating tidy conclusions to the most absurd situations, or because his own studio, New Line Cinema, demanded that he end on a bright note, is unclear.

Either way, it doesn’t matter. The film’s falsely happy ending, while not as clever as it could have been, nevertheless gets to the heart of what’s wrong with so many mainstream movies.

Grade: B

On video and DVD

HIGH CRIMES, directed by Carl Franklin, written by Yuri Zeltser and Cary Bickley, 115 minutes, PG-13.

Carl Franklin’s “High Crimes” is one of those glossy, well-acted potboilers that doesn’t aim high enough. The film, from a script by Yuri Zeltser and Cary Bickley, stars Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman in their first screen pairing since 1997’s “Kiss the Girls,” but this time out, all they manage is an awkward hug.

The film gets off to a promising start with Judd as Claire Kubick, a fierce, high-powered attorney for a high-powered law firm whose high-powered life is about to be hit by a high-powered wrecking ball.

During an innocent evening of holiday shopping in San Francisco, Claire and her sensitive husband, Tom (Jim Caviezel), are ambushed not by the crowds, but by the FBI.

Apparently, Tom’s real name is Ron Chapman, something that shocks Claire to the sole of her Manolo Blahniks. Now, she must deal with the knowledge that the love of her life and the father of her unborn child allegedly went on a killing spree in a Salvadorian village in 1988, leaving nine women and children dead in his wake.

Is Tom-Ron a murderer? With the help of Charlie Grimes (Freeman), Claire fights the good fight to find out in spite of being beaten up, harassed and threatened by an evil band of military personnel determined to bring her to silence.

Without a genuine surprise or, worse, a moment that doesn’t feel as if it was first approved by a test audience, “High Crimes” is actually only average, a film whose excellent cast proves the only heartbeat in a story that was dead on arrival.

Grade: C

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, occasionally on E! Entertainment’s “E! News Weekend,” Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.