Simone -  2002   - Andrew Niccol - Director & Producer

  Reviewed 19 February 2003  SIMONE is an extremely lifelike computer construct that has had every nuance of human expression and voice programmed into it, er, her...   'She' is actually a compilation of several leading stars from the past.   Simone comes to film producer Viktor Taranski by way of a computer hard disk created by Hank, a dying computer programmer.   Meanwhile, Taranski's problems with troublesome leading ladies and his ex-wife-boss have nearly broken him, so in a last-gasp attempt to finish his failing movie, he decides to use Hank's digital SIMulation-ONE as the lead.   He decides to keep it a secret...just for a while.
       His "just for a while" stretches far longer than anticipated, and finally far longer than desired, when Simone's movies become instant smash-hits, and his pixel pop package begins to take on a 'life' of her own.  Taranski finds himself in a complicated dilemma; - keeping the secret becomes continually more difficult, security-wise, and personally.   Yet, at the same time, Taranski (Al Pacino) finds himself rising to the pinnacle of Hollywood 'success'.   He knows he will soon need to make a decision, to break the dilemma, but before he can, things start to unravel.
       This is a delightful comedy, where we get to see both Pacino and Winona Ryder do some real acting. (Way too little of Winona.)    Producer/Director Andrew Niccol has been accused of using SIMONE to lay the tired old message on the viewing public that "Hollywood is a phoney, unreal and insincere place".  But this is too facile.  His message is -- as he dazzlingly illustrates in the film; -- a humorous, slightly chilling reminder that stars are not born, but rather, they are 'made' -- in every sense of the word, and that the adoring public is more than just a little gullible when buying into all the publicity hype.  And I would judge he has done a rather excellent job of it; most of the people I spoke to about the movie thought that Taranski's 'synthespian' star Simone was a digitized, 3-D animated version of the actual flesh-and-blood Simone.  
      Enduring Line or Phrase:  "It's not that you aren't human, it's that I am."

                 To print this page: *CLICK* .    © 2003, Bangkok Eyes / bangkokeyes.com