The number one show in the country features singing hopefuls vying for stardom. After a grueling campaign, the incumbent President of the United States wins re-election, but seems generally clueless as to what's actually going on in his country. Somewhere on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, terrorists train to bring down the Great Satan, though they've clearly been influenced by American culture.

American Dreamz means to be satire, but it hits almost too close to the bone. Paul Weitz' script, directed by Weitz himself, has a lot of cleverness to it, but doesn't work hard enough to disguise its major targets. Of course, when real life is as crazy as it is, there's not much room to exaggerate.

When it comes to the thinly disguised American Idol show, the movie plays more as parody. It's Mad Magazine time as the highest profile Idol contestants strut across the stage. At least the Clay Aiken wanna-be (Joshua Wade Miller) gets a decent song; poor Bo Bice suffers the admittedly hilarious indignity of Trey Parker portraying him by belting "I'm a rockin' man…"

Tying reality television into the political arena doesn't seem that far-fetched, either. Already some have complained that the plot stretches credibility by having President Staton (Dennis Quaid) appear as a judge on the television show, but as a P.R. scheme hatched by his Chief of Staff (Willem Dafoe), it makes sense. When the networks won't preempt their programming for a State of the Union address, you have to become a part of it.

As for the terrorist plot, some may have trouble laughing. It's not terribly subversive, though, to suggest that there may be hypocrisy from within, though unhappy and somewhat unwilling terrorist Omer (Sam Golzari) clearly doesn't fit with his brethren. His character arc is actually the most subtle; all the pieces are there, but Weitz doesn't hammer them into our brains.

Unfortunately, he doesn't show the same restraint with his other targets. Though Staton actually comes off as sympathetic, the resemblance to assumptions about our current President are numerous and blunt. A reformed alcoholic, all of his knowledge of the world comes through the filter of daily briefings, and his staff panics when he decides he wants to read the newspaper on his own.

Without a Paula or Randy to soften him, Hugh Grant's Martin Tweed is reduced to cold calculation, rather than just brutal honesty. He meets his match in the next "American Dreamer," Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore), a homespun girl manipulating her image from the start. Here American Dreamz turns to its most cynical, as from the beginning, Sally is a driven bitch. Ironic, somehow, that sometime pop star Moore has never quite hit the success of Sally's model, Kelly Clarkson. (I don't want to believe this is actually indicative of Clarkson's actual personality.)

Commenting on our obsession with fame is nothing new. Small-town girls trying to get to something bigger through vapid celebrity goes back decades, and was covered viciously well in Michael Ritchie's Smile. But Weitz does make a few new cogent observations. Certainly, reality television veers into being our new pornography - a dirty little secret that almost everybody shares.

A few strokes of genius appear amidst the broad slashes. Using Dafoe as a combination of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove with a dash of Scott McLellan works meanly but well, culminating in a tour de force lizard performance. Omer's American dream actually turns out poignantly, if a little obviously. And as Sally's hapless fiancé, Chris Klein finds a couple of extra notes to his usual dimbulb tune.

Even the Bush jabs fall softly, partly because Quaid is just a likable guy. The script gets fuzzy as to exactly what's going on with his wife (Marcia Gay Harden), but it also gives them a fairy tale ending - a bit dangerous for something striving to be satirical.

American Dreamz alternates between trying to baldly shock and timidly saying it's okay. Weitz gets points for trying to say something meaningful while couching it in humor, but it may just be too soon. Perhaps in five years more people can laugh about this, but now, the truths he tells are just too painful. And some of them we would really rather just believe to be lies.

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