A virtual superstar

Producer-writer-director Andrew Niccol's comedy is a one-joke affair, very slight, with a single star - Al Pacino - and a feeling it's been knocked off in haste and that some scenes that needed shooting haven't even been written.

But for all that, its notion is appealing: a film-maker (Pacino) who's all washed up after three flops creates a virtual actress on a computer, names her SimOne (for Simulation One) implants her into his latest film in place of the uppity leading lady (Winona Ryder), who's just walked out in a huff over the size of her trailer, and finds himself with a star as big as Greta Garbo - and as invisible off screen.

This dea ex machina (played by an anonymous professional model, but actually Rachel Roberts) comes to dominate her hollow-eyed Pygmalion's life, usurp his celebrity - a nice touch is Pacino's forgetting to thank himself when he vocally simulates SimOne's acceptance speech for the Best Actress Oscar - and eventually provokes him to revolt and convert her from global celebrity to chat-show slut. Her fame only grows in absentia.

The joke, of course, is on the public, but it's destined to be rather less of a joke when the simulation industry, which so far has inserted a deceased Oliver Reed digitally into the Gladiator epic, really begins to computerise film performers who won't need to be paid or have agents.

The film doesn't really attempt to simulate life: it's a fantasy cut to a Fellini-esque pattern, superficially serious and intermittently amusing. Pacino acts in overdrive and the best performance, in fact, comes from - SimOne.

Simone
Cert: certPG