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Simone
(Reviewed August 9, 2002)
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How can a movie starring Al Pacino and Catherine Keener possibly be as embarrassingly lousy as this one? This bomb isn't merely bad, it is a strong contender for worst film of the year. No kiddin'.
Pacino is a down-on-his-luck director who revives his career by "discovering" a new and very mysteriously private actress known only as Simone--who actually is an entirely computer-generated creation. Keener is his ex-wife who now runs the studio that releases Simone's movies. The whole wide world falls for Simone as if she is a combination of Greta Garbo and Britney Spears (now there's an image...), thinking that she is human.
There is not a convincing moment in this entire movie, even on a comedic level. I didn't believe that Pacino could keep his secret, which makes the whole movie fall apart right from the start. The "inside Hollywood" studio stuff seemed to have been written by someone who either (a) got all of his info about the way the biz works by reading cheap paperbacks and watching "Entertainment Tonight," or (b) decided to patronize the rubes in the audience by writing down to them instead of giving them credit for any intelligence whatsoever.
There were only two things I enjoyed about "Simone":
Evan Rachel Wood (of TV's "Once and Again"), who plays Pacino's teenage daughter, is really sweet and likeable in a "non-sickening-Hollywood-kid" way. And when Pacino tries to subvert Simone's image by putting her in a film titled "I Am Pig," the clip we see from that "Springtime for Hitler"-type debacle really is funny.
Other than that, Simone is all zeros and no ones. Okay, that's a nerdy and pretty lame binary-code computer joke, but it's better than what I was going to end with: "Simone sucks the big one." See? You're welcome.
Back Row Grade: F
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