In Sofia Coppola’s based-on-a-true-story The Bling Ring, well-off LA teens obsessed with celebrities and fashion break into the homes of their tawdry idols to steal their clothes, jewellery and loose cash, and are then dumb enough to boast about it to their schoolmates. Talk about a Zeitgeist-defining tale.

Had these events not really occurred, Coppola would no doubt have been accused of creating thin and unbelievably shallow characters. Adapting her script from a feature in Vanity Fair, she has however created a vividly believable Instagram shot of contemporary pop culture at its lowest ebb, her jabs at the vacuousness and narcissism of these spoilt kids’ lives coming across as sharply chiseled satire where they could easily have appeared as cheap shots.

There isn’t a whole lot of plotting here, beyond a few character sketches interspersed by a series of robberies (the kids get into Paris Hilton’s home by correctly assuming she’d be stupid enough to leave a key under the mat), so at times it feels a little thin. But aided by a lively young cast (headed by ex-Harry Potter star Emma Watson), the writer-director creates a film that entertains as much as it appalls.