A love/hate relationship with the movie star set

Mr. Famous

A Novel

Carol Wolper

Riverhead Books: 264 pp., $24.95

*

Is there such a thing as a popcorn novel, like a popcorn movie? If so, Carol Wolper’s “Mr. Famous” is it: a slick, blockbuster-style work of fiction that floats away from memory the moment you finish reading it.

Like her novels “Cigarette Girl” and “Secret Celebrity,” Wolper’s third book mocks the cult of celebrity. It makes no pretense about being anything more substantial, and reading this novel seems a fairly pleasant and harmless way to pass a half-hour or so of one’s time.

We follow the travails of Lucinda, personal chef and nutritionist to a fading, middle-aged action movie star she calls Mr. Famous (his real name is Victor), who yearns to reinvent himself as a serious actor. Lucinda has just ended an unsatisfying relationship with Matt, a “paranoid narcissist,” and is dealing with her own problems. But she feels compelled to help Mr. Famous manage his dizzying array of troubles.

This isn’t a Hollywood version of “The Devil Wears Prada,” however. Lucinda likes her boss, narcissism and neuroses aside. Even as she listens to him complain about, say, being downgraded on the guest list to Vanity Fair’s coveted Oscar party, she can’t help feeling protective of him. Yet she admits that her mild concern for his well-being isn’t motivated entirely by compassion.

“I’d become expert at reading all signs to determine his mood,” she says, “partly because as an employee who worked in my boss’s house, it was in my best interest to gauge his shifting temperament. It was also because I had the standard fascination that comes with being a spectator in a movie star’s world.” Lucinda finds herself pondering such matters as whether “celebrities are different because they’re famous, or famous because they’re different.”

That’s about as profound as “Mr. Famous” gets. Throughout, there are the typical cautionary-tale lessons on fickle Hollywood careers and wildly extravagant lifestyles. When Mr. Famous screams at Alex, his agent, for the poorly received test screening of his upcoming movie “Last Standing,” Alex responds with Yoda-like wisdom: “Victor, just ‘cause you sell your soul doesn’t mean you get what you want. There are no guarantees here. You can sell yourself and end up with nothing. Selling your soul is not an insurance policy -- it’s a lottery ticket.”

Names are dropped, from Bottega Veneta and Prada to Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert De Niro, sprinkled alongside incongruous references to F. Scott Fitzgerald and even Jane Eyre. (“I’ve always hated Jane Eyre. She’s a classic passive-aggressive.”) Wolper includes requisite mentions of Botox, acupuncture, collagen treatments, facials and other tokens of Hollywood vanity.

Aside from serving as personal chef, personal assistant and de facto psychologist to Mr. Famous, Lucinda has a minor subplot of her own involving a stalker who appears to be her bitter ex-boyfriend. Also, the more involved Lucinda becomes in her boss’ life, the more confused she becomes about the boundaries between them. “I’d always known it was dangerous for an employee to blur the line between professional and personal,” she says. Sorting through their relationship becomes yet another full-time job for her.

The revelations in “Mr. Famous” are as slight as everything else in this novel, and by the end, it’s hard to care about whatever lessons these characters might have learned from Hollywood’s cruel ways. The author can’t seem to decide whether to make Mr. Famous the unlikely, sensitive hero of her story or to treat him as just another self-obsessed movie star.

Lucinda is ultimately a boring protagonist who veers from detached Hollywood observer to sycophant. Although Wolper ostensibly pokes fun at the curious and complicated lives of celebrities, she also seems undeniably riveted, too admiring to be wholly scathing.

“Mr. Famous” seems more a love letter to Hollywood than a critique, played just safe enough so as not to offend anyone.