Can celebrities be numbingly boring? As far as "Maps to the Stars" is concerned the answer is a big fat "Yes," but in the hands of David Cronenberg ("A Dangerous Method," "Eastern Promises") you hardly notice. Ennui and varying degrees of hysteria define this Hollywood fable where everyone is a monster, feeding off their own paranoia born of colossal self-obsession. If you've ever wondered what being a celebrity is like — and "Maps to the Stars" probably offers a good approximation of the truth — it's a world where people just can't stop talking about themselves, whether they have an audience or not.
Having said that, watching A-listers engage in a grand game of self-spoof and satire is nothing short of fascinating. But then Hollywood has always been good at eliciting laughs (and tears) at its own expense, from Orson Welles and Charlie Chaplin to David Lynch and Tim Robbins in "The Player." There are no shortage of examples. And yet, despite the sameness and predictability of it all, these stories are almost always entertaining. "Maps to the Stars" is no exception and the title is telling: There's more than one map to reach the same destination.
"Maps" charts the lives of the Weiss family, who are living the typical Hollywood success story in which the mom, Christina (Olivia Williams), tends to the career of her 13-year-old child actor son, Benjie (Evan Bird), and dad, Stafford (John Cusack), is a self-help coach catering exclusively to the celebrity bunch.