Culture

There is nothing in The September Issue that could be described with the normal documentary vocabulary. Director RJ Cutler does not probe, investigate, expose or provide much insight into the world of Vogue. What we get instead is an entertaining effort in rebranding.
The fashion industry has taken the blame in recent years for a variety of social ills – credit card debt, anorexia, teenage pregnancy, drug addiction and more. Fashion magazines and the thin models contained within are now the go-to scapegoat for low self-esteem and its ever-expanding list of consequences. When the recession hit, fingers were jabbed more fiercely and the key players fell out of favor alongside celebrities, or anyone else living luxuriously. This film pointedly includes a money shot of a model trussed up in a corset happily biting into a huge cream pastry. We don't, however, see if she swallows.

The concept of Surrogates might sound good, after all it's based on a graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldel. Unfortunately, at the hands of the gang behind Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, it misfires, turning into a slow-paced, bland fiasco. This Disney fairy tale/sci-fi thriller plays out like an episode of Law and Order: Special Surrogates Unit – it's a glorified TV show without any redeeming qualities.
The opening provides background history through news footage: the crime rate is down dramatically now that everyone is living through robotic surrogate bodies. People seem to function with regular jobs and have non-stop fun with no apparent risk to their own bodies (beyond atrophy). Users at home operate sexy, physically perfect mechanical versions of themselves as they grow weak, feeble and unhealthy from dentist-chair-like recliners. That is until some craggy faced “meat bag” on a motorcycle yanks out a death ray and ices some surrogates, mysteriously killing their real users at home. This brings in surrogate FBI agents Greer and Peters (Bruce Willis, Rhada Mitchell) and a whole bunch of convoluted plot twists and turns. Apparently, things in a super-fake world just aren't as they seem. Agent Greer, forced to go solo, discovers a vast conspiracy behind the surrogate phenomenon. Abandoning his surrogate, he risks his life to unravel the mystery uncomfortably interacting with a city full of pretty mannequins.