American Dreamz

In 1968, Andy Warhol famously declared, "In the future everybody will be famous for 15 minutes."

His forewarning of the fading lustre of celebrity has slowly but surely come true. Reality TV has become a portal to instant stardom, propelling ordinary boys, girls, men and women into the white-hot glare of the media spotlight.

You no longer have to achieve greatness to win the public's adoration: Now, it's merely a case of sitting in a house under 24-hour camera surveillance, abasing yourself on a freakish talent show, or stabbing your rivals in the back in the boardroom.

American Dreamz is a satire of the reality TV phenomenon, lampooning shows such as Pop Idol and X-Factor which turn mediocre karaoke wannabes into the next chart superstar.

Writer-director Paul Weitz takes potshots at the makers of these cult programmes, as well as the hopefuls. But he fails to draw blood, allowing his characters to verge on caricature.

Despite an eye-catching performance from Mandy Moore as a trailer-trash belle who will do anything to win the top prize, including exploiting her war hero boyfriend (Klein), the humour is too broad to cut to the bone.

Martin Tweed (Grant) is the egomaniac ringleader of the top-rated television circus American Dreamz, a nationwide search to unearth the next great singing talent.

Ratings depend on finding the perfect combination of contestants and Martin's instructions to the show's producers Accordo and Ittles (Greer, Cho) are simple: "I'm talking human. And by human I mean flawed. And by flawed I mean freaks. Find me some freaks."

They duly oblige, welcoming hugely ambitious vixen Sally Kendoo (Moore), crazy orthodox Jew Sholem ( Busch), and showtunes-obsessed Omer ( Golzari), an immigrant from the Middle East who is actually a terrorist-in-waiting.

As the programme moves towards its grand finale, the media is abuzz with news that the President of the United States, Joe Staton (Quaid), has agreed to act as guest judge.

This coup, masterminded by the President's Chief of Staff (Dafoe) and endorsed by the First Lady (Harden), should push Staton's approval ratings through the roof.

Except Omer has been ordered to use the occasion to blow himself up, along with the President.

American Dreamz has its moments and a sprinkling of decent one-liners but the film opts for soft targets, and the writing isn't sharp enough to milk the dark humour of the terrorist subplot.

Grant's selfish swine needs to be much nastier, but Moore and Golzari hold their own, and there's an attention-grabbing supporting turn from Tony Yalda as Omer's flamboyantly camp cousin Iqbal, whose dreams of stardom are cruelly nipped in the bud: "If these people know nothing about talent, there's not much I can do about it, is there?"