S1M0NE | Review

Niccol mockery of a system is a mockery itself.

I remember my reaction to the ‘realness’ of one of the characters found in Final Fantasy, but somehow I never gave it a second thought…that is until now. The empowerment of the mass media, the human isolation of alienation and the advancements in genetic engineering were the intriguing Orwell-ian questions that director Andrew Niccol’s investigated with his story treatment of The Truman Show and in his own directorial debut of Gattaca and his new film continues along the same line of questioning about the technological future and social causes of concern with this feature, at this point I wonder what is next? – a script based on chimera animals found in pet-stores in the year 2034…oh look daddy at the cute cat-dog in the window?

Simone, also referred to as ‘Sim One’ touches a poignant subject matter of our time-no not the meaning of life question, but with the new heights that CGI films have reached over a short period of time shows that the quality of the human image built from computer graphics can astonished-ly come close to resembling the real thing, -no Harrison Ford doesn’t have to lose any sleep, but perhaps Josh Harnett should sign on the dotted line for a Pearl Harbour part III-because, quite frankly you never know. Unfortunately, what Niccol knew in his first two projects doesn’t project itself in this comedy a flat-out interpretation about stardom and the role of the paparazzi press-basically it seems more like a commentary manqué than the smart insight, which he projected before. In his unflattering role as a washed-up director Viktor Taransky- Al Pacino (Insomnia) with his drink in one hand who out-of-the-sky is given the perfect gift. He learns pretty quickly how to use this new present, after the daunting task of separating coloured candy and basically dealing with impossible actors Winona Ryder (Zoolander) he can now manipulate a very complex computer program-where the only fun aspect for the viewer is seeing how he can add some star power from yester-year-Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn. The hot beauty Simone is created in the image of her manipulator-meanwhile the whole world wants more of her and the subplot of a family with wife Catherine Keener (Lovely & Amazing) wanting her old tired husband back in the palm of her hands is tedious storytelling- basically the family gets back together-not that we care about it and the film’s big conclusion does not bring the viewer into a state of euphoria.

The problem with this feature is that the subject matter might be of interest but the lack of creativity shows that there wasn’t much effort put into the film, raise questions but don’t bother taking anything from them is how I felt about the picture, -and no, the family getting back together just dissolves into literal silly-putty. Another thing that annoyed me was the ease that the protagonist had at creating films with simple keyboard touches-suspend your beliefs, I didn’t like the daughter used as a parental crutch and nor do I find Pacino credible in his role-suffering from a bad film selection batting average-note DeNiro is also in that same dilemma. For the very few moments of pleasure that this film has to give (Pacino in the green screen room), there are way too many other annoyances; perhaps Simone should have been treated with the same sort of dark treatment as Gattaca?

Rating 1.5 stars