Rating- * * * (3/5)
Sometimes you can learn a lot about a movie by looking at the way it’s treated by the studio. If a movie is released in early to mid-summer you can be assured that it will feature lots of explosions and thrills. If it’s released in the late fall you can probably assume that it will focus more on personal and emotional subjects and will probably be more artistically ambitious than the summer film. If a film gets released in the dreaded month of August, that means that it falls somewhere between boring and action-packed blockbuster. Since less people are going to the movies in August, the studios figure they can get away with a movie that doesn’t quite please everybody. It seems that is what New Line has done with Simone. It is a comedy, but it’s not always funny; it is a farce, but doesn’t always condemn the thing it is farcing. Simone is about an aging director named Viktor Taransky, played wonderfully by the always brilliant Al Pacino, who is fired from his studio because the bratty star (Winona Ryder) of his latest project has dropped out. To add insult to injury, the studio chief that fired him happens to be his ex-wife (Catherine Keener) leaving Taransky with seemingly no one to turn to. As Taransky is packing his things to leave the studio, he is approached by an old acquaintance named Hank Aleno (Elias Koteas), a computer scientist who has come up with a program that he claims will remove the need for real actors forever. Hank begs Viktor to take the program and use it but the disheartened Viktor wants nothing to do with it. Soon afterward, Hank dies and leaves the program to Viktor in his will. Desperate and somewhat curious, Viktor boots up the software and finds to his astonishment a simulated re-creation of a human woman. She is built from thousands of characteristics incorporated from virtually every famous actress in history and looks not only real but gorgeous. To make a point, Viktor removes Winona Ryder from the scenes of his last movie and inserts his new creation to show Hollywood that actors have no right to act like brats if they can be easily replaced. To his surprise, the digital actress gets rave reviews and becomes Hollywood’s newest star. Figuring he could use the publicity, and the money, Viktor calls his new creation Simone (a take off the program’s name, Simulation One) and begins to turn her into the most elusive, mysterious starlet since Greta Garbo, who actually shows up on quite a few walls and backgrounds in the film. This is where the film starts to miss opportunities to be a great satire. The film does do a good job at showing the ridiculous behavior of the Hollywood press when they find a new star and it also shows how easy it is to sell people on anything (as when Simone becomes a pop star). There are some funny moments in this part of the film but ultimately it lacked the charm and truthful beauty of The Truman Show, and the haunting social commentary of Gattaca (both written and directed by Andrew Niccol, the writer/director of Simone). Nonetheless, there are enough great performances from Pacino and Ryder, who does a great brat, and a small but hilarious stint by cult favorite Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore, CQ). If the concept sounds interesting to you, I would say it’s probably worth a rent but don’t expect the best movie of the year. If you are looking for some more overt comedy, I would pass this one by.