© William Ahearn 2006

If "Tron" is a fairytale for geeks, "S1m0ne" is a fairytale for the rest of us. Or a fairytale as envisioned by someone who thinks that everyone is as naive as he is. This is one of those feel-good flicks about family and illusion that would have played way better on the old ABC After School Special that used to run on US TV for school children. Except children these days are too computer savvy to be taken by this manipulation.

By 2002, computers were commonplace. The little monsters were everywhere. Even cave dwellers stuck on WebTV out in some god forsaken frontier had gained some computer knowledge.

Except, it seems, Andrew Niccol, the writer/director of this flick. The story of "S1m0ne" is that a Hollywood producer loses his leading lady and so he virtually creates a new star to save his career. This is his secret and he creates "her" and the films by himself in a locked studio.

There is a very interesting article on creating virtual reality characters here.

Of course the digital actress becomes an over-night sensation and then the producer, Viktor Taransky (Al Pacino), is blamed for her murder when no one can find her. Add his about-to-be ex-wife and young daughter to this mess and it'll take you about five minutes to write the rest of the script yourself.

Maybe it's a sci-fi flick, maybe it's a comedy, maybe it's satire. The film never makes up its mind and even a restrained Al Pacino can't produce the heat to make up for the lack of light.

Just about every instance of computing is wrong even to a casual computer user. The film seems to hope that its fairytale posturing will gloss over the holes in the story. "Wag the Dog" managed to do it. "S1m0ne" doesn't even get close.

A much more interesting story recently played out with Lonelygirl15 on YouTube.com. You can read wired.com's version of events here.

It's amusing to me that in the half century of computer films, the first several films -- "Gog," "Desk Set," "The Honeymoon Machine," "Dr. Strangelove" -- were far more accurate about computing in a time when few people had even heard of the digital beasts than the last two films -- "Swordfish" and "S1m0ne" -- made when the audience was deep into the internet age.

The future for computer-centric flicks does not look bright.