Oh sure, Catherine Keener, Winona Ryder, Al Pacino, who wouldn't go see a film starring even one of these folks. But all three equals must see! Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, the same fellow who wrote The Truman Show, an interesting look at the ultimate evolution of reality television. In S1m0ne (OK, that's it - way too hard to type, I now revert to Simone) Niccol continues his exploration of technologies subversion of our humanity. Gattaca, with Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, and Jude Law, was his first. A futuristic thriller about genetics and an attempt to perfect the species. Simone is the same object (technology running roughshod over humanity) from a different perspective. Simone is a computer generated creation whose fame soon outstrips the wildest imaginings of her progenitor. The artificial creation takes on a lifer of her own, so to speak, and the resultant comedic and ironic twists and turns are sufficient to power several feature films... in movie hell, maybe.

Act one has Elaine Christian (Keener) terminating her ex-husband, Viktor Taransky (Pacino) when his star (Ryder) walks out on her contract because someone else has a bigger trailer. The pastiche of scenes that make up Act One are as contrived and forced as any I have ever seen. The dialogue is pretentious and overblown, the constructs juvenile, the editing choppy, the acting unconvincing. The balance of the film is a trifling better than the first act, in the sense that cuts are better than burns (fewer nerve endings are effected in cuts). The "message" we are left with in this mess is "fake is OK, just don't lie about it." That would seem to be a compromise of Mr. Niccol's message from his earlier works.