S1m0ne

Hilariously inventive Hollywood satire.

Niccol gives audiences a very amusing puzzle about authenticity, fraud, and the uses and abuses of technology. That is a fine and funny feat. The very folks responsible for our obsession with celebrity will likely love it. And in loving it, they will no doubt let themselves off the hook.

The result is gorgeous, if ultimately shallow -- much like Simone herself.

Some movies need a suspension of disbelief. Simone requires a suspension bridge. And as fast as you try to build it, the movie keeps tearing it down.

If this is satire, it's the smug and self-congratulatory kind that lets the audience completely off the hook. Effective satire, the Swiftian brand, seduces us first and then implicates us in the seduction -- we become a target too. But this stuff never gets past the initial step -- it's toothless, as innocuous as the puffery it pretends to skewer.

The premise cries out for take-no-prisoners, Terry-Southern-style sick humor; it gets instead a lot of clunky, self-congratulatory in-jokes, and Pacino is left to ham in a vacuum.

Such a tedious Hollywood farce, so unpleasantly glib and relentlessly shallow, that Pacino's excessive performance is not even the worst thing about it.

Coming out in 2002, going back twenty-two years on this one, this film may have been forgotten by most, but the premise has relations with the present day. Starring Al Pacino, as an aging movie director Viktor Taransky, and Catherine Keener, as Viktor’s boss and ex-wife Elaine Christian. Down on his luck, but willing to stay in the movie business, opportunity finds Viktor in the form of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). With a computer program barely explained, and nine months later, a star is born on the computer screen. Or as Al Pacino says, “A star is… digitized…” (rough quote). It’s not long after “her” creation, the AI actress known as Simone (played by Rachel Roberts) takes over the theater screens and the hearts of everyone on the planet. There is just one catch, only Viktor knows Simone is an A.I. program and not a real person. With the increase of Simone’s popularity, it gets harder and harder to keep the secret from everyone. Even when the idea of Simone becomes more powerful than the creator. How will Viktor keep this secret, even from the people who know him best? The concept for this film is fascinating. The idea that you can create an entire actress, or person for that matter, out of thin air. The A.I. program would obey every command, have command of the acting profession overnight, and best of all no baggage/drama. Every movie director dream, I am sure. Anyway, whether or not, AI is a good idea, in any industry, is another conversation. Like I mentioned earlier, how this A.I. works is vaguely defined. I have more questions about the keyboard Al Pacino was using than the actual A.I. program. With such an interesting concept/plot, I wished the movie excelled in other aspects. The movie is labelled as a sci-fi/comedy, which took me by surprise honestly. This movie has a hard time deciding what genre it wants to be. A bad balance of both comedy and dramatic moments is present. I understand “suspension of disbelief” very well, but there are moments that are just plain silly. Which brings me to the runtime. With the runtime of two hours, this could’ve been cut down to almost thirty minutes if it was a comedy, or fifteen minutes going in the dramatic direction. Having the extended runtime just stuffed this movie with unnecessary scenes (if you do see this movie, you’ll know what I mean). Not to spoil anything, but personally, I didn’t enjoy the ending or believe it hit the mark. Left me with more concerned about the meaning of A.I. and how far people should take this technology. Even in between the chaos of this movie, there were good moments/scenes people can connect with. In a couple of scenes, Al Pacino is talking to himself in front of the computer and talking to Simone as an actual person instead of just an A.I. program. I just wish I saw more of these scenes and/or the scenes were explored further. Overall, this is a movie with a great concept and has potential for a terrific story. However, the extended runtime, unnecessary scenes, and an unbalanced story structure makes this film miss the entire point it is trying to make.