Considering the insanity that IS the Hollywood "dream factory," you would think it was a target ripe for skewering. And, if you think back to some recent parodies like THE PLAYER, LIVING IN OBLIVION and THE BIG PICTURE, it is ripe for skewering, especially when there's some talent behind it. Shit, you can even dip into the world of B-flicks and you'll find hilarious examples like HOLLYWOOD BLVD., the underrated HOLLYWOOD BLVD. 2, and even Fred Olen Ray's camped-out titty-fest, BAD GIRLS FROM MARS.

So, it would stand to reason that a satire from the pen of a prominent Hollywood figure with more than an axe or two (or three) to grind would be a vicious way to pass 90 minutes. Wouldn't it?

Not if you've seen the excruciating, shameful, self-indulgent timewaster that is BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN. The tissue-paper-thin premise has a director (poor Eric Idle) stealing his action flick TRIO after studio involvement turned the Stallone-Whoopi-Chan "epic" into a mess. Oh, yeah, and the big joke is that the director's name is Alan Smithee, the pseudonym used by the Director's Guild when a director wants his name removed from a project. Like this one.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's as good as the jokes in this mess get.

Which shouldn't come as any great surprise considering this is the masterwork of Joe Eszterhas, "writer" of such landmark works as JADE and BASIC INSTINCT. What one can't forget, however, is that Big Joe did pen the best comedy of the 90s, the unintentionally hilarious SHOWGIRLS -- a film with more belly-busting laughs in its first reel than BHB elcits from start to finish. Perhaps Eszterhas should've attempted another serious study of the human condition, an effort that would've surely resulted in another laughfest.

For those of you that suffer through this, well, garbage, you have my unyielding sympathy. I'm not sure, but I think I fell asleep at one point, or perhaps I simply drifted into the fog that results any time I'm forced to watch the unctious Richard Jeni "perform." For those of you who realized within the first ten minutes that this disaster wasn't getting any better, here's what you missed: Ryan O'Neal is a scumbag, perhaps the film's truest moment; bloated has-been Robert Evans schucking some jive about his cajones; plenty of poor Eric Idle; Sylvester Stallone displaying an inexplicable, previously unseen grasp of the words "comic timing"; and rappers Chuck D and Coolio somehow emerging from the proceedings unscathed.