| New Line Home Video | Release Date: August 23, 2002 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
11
Mixed:
21
Negative:
6
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Critic Reviews
Niccol gives audiences a very amusing puzzle about authenticity, fraud, and the uses and abuses of technology. That is a fine and funny feat. The very folks responsible for our obsession with celebrity will likely love it. And in loving it, they will no doubt let themselves off the hook.
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That's not to say Simone doesn't offer a good time. Shove aside its self-righteous agenda and it's a deft kick, a light comedy whenever it's not trying to play heavy. And it's bolstered by Al Pacino in a lively performance.
I don't believe that anyone will have much trouble seeing what's wrong with the picture, but it's one of those bad movies that you remember with a smile a year later. [9 September 2002, p. 162]
It's a strange, uneven film, hilarious in moments and tin-eared in others, alternately subtle and hammer-handed, acid and dull, as schizophrenic as "Signs" and probably, like that film, best enjoyed in discrete chunks rather than as a whole that needs to be digested equally all at once.
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If this is satire, it's the smug and self-congratulatory kind that lets the audience completely off the hook. Effective satire, the Swiftian brand, seduces us first and then implicates us in the seduction -- we become a target too. But this stuff never gets past the initial step -- it's toothless, as innocuous as the puffery it pretends to skewer.
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But for what it is, the film supplies enough laughs to bury most nagging existential questions.
It's also unclear just what Niccol wanted this film to be: a satire? a spoof? a black comedy? a pointed social commentary? Perhaps all of the above - way too many hats for a movie this slight to wear.
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