As The Times BFI London Film Festival kicks off this weekend, here’s some advice to the gathered movie stars: nice to see you, but please shut up. Let us enjoy your shock frocks and flash tuxedos. But any spouting of trite political opinions will have me chucking popcorn.

With more and more Hollywood stars “going political”, film festivals, those once glamorous and glitzy affairs, have turned into pulpits for sanctimonious pop politics. Give me the superficial but oh-so-nonchalant cool of Gary Grant any day over George Clooney calling for the Bush Administration to intervene in Darfur. Let’s consider Clooney’s insight on the matter: “It’s not a political issue. There is only right or wrong.” Gee, thanks – but for the record, adults can deal with the Technicolor complexity of politics and leave black-and-white morality tales to the kiddies.

If only Clooney were a lone voice: the rest of the brat-pack cast of Oceans 13 raised Darfur at the Cannes festival this year; Cate Blanchett told international leaders to be “more tolerant” at the Toronto festival; and Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary The 11th Hour, a simplistic morality tale about beastly Man’s impact on the planet, is touring the film festival circuit with a message for us all to “consume less and live more”.

“Big corporations are evil,” declare films such as The Constant Gardener and Michael Clayton. “Bush is bad” is the message of the new movie Rendition. Intricate plots or character development go to the wall in the name of “politics-for-the-simple-minded” messages. It’s as if Hollywood has swallowed hook, line and sinker a Michael Moore propaganda documentary. A new generation of “aware” actors and directors is churning out political movies that make Schwarzenegger blockbusters of the 1980s look positively sophisticated. But there is one thing to be said for Arnie: at least he was elected.

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During the filming of Blood Diamond DiCaprio worked with 24 Mozambican orphans and was said to be “extremely touched by his interactions”. Well, bully for him. But DiCaprio’s navel-gazing fades in comparison to the breathtaking self-righteousness of Not On Our Watch, an organisation headed up by Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon that aims “to stop and prevent mass atrocities” by “drawing on the powerful voices of citizen artists, activists and cultural leaders”.

The Hollywood glitterati’s self-transformation into preachy role models has had a dampening effect on serious political debate and good cinema. It’s time we cried “Cut!” on those who believe they really are superheroes. Nathalie Rothschild is producing the “Can Films Change the World?” debate at the Battle of Ideas Festival on October 27. www.battleofideas.org.uk

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