Live long enough and you'll see everything, even David Cronenburg direct a comedy. Well, that's comedy as viewed through his unique prism and the results won't have Seth McFarlane nor Adam Sandler circling the wagons anytime soon.

Cronenburg's barbs are aimed at the Hollywood machine and those it consumes, and they're sharp, uncomfortable barbs at that. Such as the straight faced actress desperate for a role because it has 'Best Supporting all over it' she says, or the thirteen year old who knows the box office cume of his hit-feature better than he knows his sister. It's satire with bite and it's extraordinarily funny. At least, at first.

Maps To The Stars opens on an impossibly sunny morning in Los Angeles when Agatha (Mia Wasikowska - Tracks) arrives on a bus looking for work in Hollywood. Waiting to pick her upo is actor-cum-limo driver Jerome Fontana (Robert Pattinson - The Rover) in whom she finds a peaceful spirit. Given what's about to happen, their friendship is unsurprising. Equally unsurprising in a city where everyone seems to know everyone else on a first name basis – Meryl, Harvey, George, that sort of thing – Agatha knows Carrie (Fisher - they met online) who hooks her up with needy actress Havana (Julianne Moore - What Maisie Knew).

Joining the dots, this map to the stars, is where the fun resides in the film's somewhat hysterical first half. Havana, desperate to play her own late mother in a film remake, a woman whose spiteful ghost frequently visits, seeks guidance from star psycho-physio-therapist Stafford Weiss (John Cusack - 2012). He, it transpires, is Agatha's estranged father and has good reasons to keep his daughter at arms length. Micro-managing the troubled career of his son Benjie (the cume-quoting actor), a boy with spiritual troubles of his own, is quite enough for one high-profile family. Agatha's troubling influence they can do without.

Yet influence she does. Agatha has a purpose, it's not benign and it is around this point, as she seeks out her brother and Havana's desperation to play her deceased mother further tips the balance, that Maps To The Stars begins a long and painful slide toward the tawdry, often nasty territory you might expect from Cronenburg. He gave us Eastern Promises and Naked Lunch after all, and he doesn't disappoint. More ghosts start to populate the story as mental illness, incest and violence consume the narrative's satirical tone. As they enter places it's not easy to go, Cronenburg gives few reasons to follow. Even Jerome, our potential beacon of hope, starts to fail under the weight of this company.

For Cronenburg has populated his story with a cast of hideous characters, none of whom show any possibility of redemption and while it makes them fascinating company, it's fascinating in a get-them-out-of-my-face kind of way. Neuroses and despicable behaviour quickly pile up as the director teases out themes that underpin the vile, shallow, crazy, self-centred, money-driven, all-consuming world of Hollywood. Yet in doing so, he doesn't offer anything especially new – they've been making these stories since long before it was all about Eve. Thankfully , there's just enough signature kookiness about the way this plays out to keep doubts in check.

As ever, Cronenburg's crisp production is a pleasure to watch. There's a cool, assured tone that recalls Todd Solondz at his best, but one given a super-cool patina that is a definition of urban clinical. So effective is this cold, eerie landscape that you can almost hear elevator music backing every moment. It also provides the ideal backdrop for the film's one great performance by Julianne Moore. As ridiculous as Havana looks, as ridiculous as LA can be, it is also easy to believe that psycho-physio-therapy sessions are the one thing keeping her from being clutched into a bottomless pit of psychotic despair. There's no reason not to believe that a hair breadth separates this woman from insanity. Moore is, as so often, outstanding.

While Maps To The Stars has an urgent sense of humour (at least, at first), it lacks much in the way of heart or warmth. Maybe that's LA, maybe that's the point. But as comedy and purpose drains from the film, it offers up plenty of reasons to avoid Hollywood but few reasons why you'd want to watch the movie. Is it a sendup of the film business, a ghostly nightmare or a stone-cold drama about dysfunctional families? Hard to say.

'Hell is a world without narcotics,” says Havana's mother's ghost. Watching this sober, it is easy to agree.

// COLIN FRASER

Previewed at Roadshow Theatrette, Sydney on October 29, 2014