In a clever sequence from 1989's underrated Hollywood send-up The Big Picture, an aspiring young director (Kevin Bacon), after years of knocking on the door, finally gets a break by making a low-budget music video for a local band. The video receives just enough exposure to catch the ear of a flunkie for a high-powered production company and, soon enough, he's the hottest name in town. With no other credits to his name, save for a pretentious student film, he gets frantic messages from producers who have heard all about his latest non-existent masterwork and want to sign him before anyone else takes a meeting. The Big Picture accomplishes in a swift five-minute montage what François Velle's trite satire New Suit labors over for a full hour and a half, which left plenty of time for a warm, character-driven comedy about maintaining integrity in a shallow place and staying true to the people who matter. Written by Craig Sherman, a debut screenwriter who presumably has an ax to grind, New Suit has the smart idea to recast "The Emperor's New Clothes" as a comment on Hollywood vapidity, but the sturdy premise delivers little in the way of actual laughs. Jordan Bridges, son of Beau, stars as a fresh-faced scribe who arrives with a romantic comedy under his arm, but without representation, his dreams are shelved away with the millions of others in agencies around town. After 18 months working a go-nowhere story-editor job for washed-up producer Dan Hedaya, Bridges pulls a practical joke on his studio colleagues by hailing a hot new screenwriter named "Jordan Strawberry." Within hours, the buzz on Strawberry grows so quickly that the mystery man already has an agent in Bridges' ex-girlfriend Marisa Coughlan, who sparks a bidding war between Hedaya and a free-spending rival. By the time Bridges gets around to the punchline, the joke has taken on a life of its own, reducing him to a Chicken Little character, powerless to stop people from profiting on a fiction. With this bitter irony, New Suit pegs Hollywood types as ego-driven illiterates and dealmakers who treat movies like widgets, riding wave after wave of hype in search of the next big thing. Velle and Sherman are undoubtedly on to something, but the film's rancor gets channeled into an especially lazy round of target practice, with all the expected shots at a culture choked by Tae-Bo, scientology, Xanax, and herbalists. Had it been made before The Big Picture, The Player, and Swimming With Sharks, New Suit might have stung a bit. But now that Hollywood satires are de rigeur, it seems like more evidence of the film industry's self-obsession.