FAKE FAMOUS (B-minus) - "Stop paying attention to them, and they'll go away," my mom often liked to say, whether we were talking about detractors at school or wasps. Here we go along with an experiment in which debut filmmaker Nick Bilton picks three random somebodies to see if he can make them influencer-famous.
The main flaw here is that the three people he chose are not very interesting (maybe that's the point?) and the most engaging one doesn't have his heart in this experiment. But Bilton is enthusiastic, and he's determined to make a statement about the latest iteration of our obsession with celebrity. Dominique Druckman, a rather mousy young woman, makes the biggest splash, though she's smart enough to quickly realize how shallow her life becomes. Christopher Bailey, a talented clothes designer, just doesn't fall for the bait. A third participant chickens out fairly early.
There's no real lesson revealed here. But we do learn some of the cut-rate secrets of influencers appearing to be living the high life, as well as the ins and outs of securing fake followers. And the best part is that all these people go away after 90 minutes and you can choose to never follow them or their co-horts around again.
OPERATION VARSITY BLUES (Incomplete) - File this under Life Is Short. We couldn't make it past the first 20 minutes of this documentary about the college-admissions scandal, Chris Smith's follow-up to the eminently delightful "Fyre." Here, though, it's more of a docudrama, heavy on re-enactments of the prime offender, the oddball fixer Rick Singer, portrayed here by Matthew Modine, buckling under a bad Moe Howard wig and perhaps the realization that his acting career peaked about 25 years ago.
Where most documentaries would take phone-call transcripts and make them compelling, Smith chooses to have Modine act them out, over and over, while "Singer" is putting his shoes on or fixing breakfast. It all plays out like a bad Afterschool Special. There's got to be a better way to tell this story on film.
BONUS TRACK
Our title track, Bowie's "Fame," co-written by John Lennon:
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