It was a fantasy left over from the last boom: Hire a movie star to pitch your startup, and the dusting of tinsel will turbocharge sales. Those William Shatner ads sold plane tickets for Priceline, right? But the career of hard-partying entrepreneur Andrew Frame did not follow that script. We hear he was just fired as CEO of the Internet-phone startup he cofounded, Ooma. His most notable decision, hiring actor Ashton Kutcher as "creative director," did not pan out; Kutcher made a few incomprehensible videos, and then faded from the scene.Frame, a high-school dropout who'd nevertheless managed to get a job at Cisco, the networking-equipment maker, could have been at least a TV star himself; he looks eerily like Will Arnett's G.O.B. character on Arrested Development. And Ooma's products, the Hub and the Scout, are pleasant enough to look at, too. As if there wasn't enough of a Hollywood connection, Frame lied about the Palo Alto-based startup's age.

Hold the phone: Voice-over-Internet startup Ooma is flailing, despite — or perhaps because of — a viral-video marketing campaign directed by Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher. Ooma launched its product, a $400 device which offers unlimited phone calls, last year, with a splash of press. Starstruck tech bloggers like TechCrunch's Michael Arrington gave away Ooma gadgets to readers in exchange for some facetime with Kutcher — and asked few questions about its nonsensical business model, which had it charging high upfront prices for hardware and giving away phone service. Now, we're told, its high-school-dropout CEO, Andrew Frame, has seen a host of executives leave.

Yelp, the local-reviews site, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. Its parties, always hedonistic rampages of drunken conversations, burlesque troops, and makeout sessions in the photobooth, helped establish its local reputation and cement the loyalty of hardcore users. (Even the founders get in on the action!) Last night, Yelp held its holiday party at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Upon entering, I was greeted by a mass of San Francisco Yelptards, each louder than the next, all laughing, cajoling, flirting, and hugging each other. Self-congratulations were clearly in order.

Jangl CEO Michael Cerda faced down a crowd of entrepreneurs at a Stirr event in Potrero Hill, and, in an unusual moment for Silicon Valley, spoke the truth. "How many of you guys are founders?" he asked. Cerda waited a beat, looked at the raised hands, and said, "You're all fucked." Until that moment, no one had really been paying attention to the "Founder's Hacks" program, even with Twitter's Evan Williams and Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams on the stage. Stirr founder Sanford Barr had been walking around shushing people like we were naughty sixth-graders. With the crowd's attention, Cerda launched into the tale of a previous startup — and most in the audience assumed he was talking about Ooma, the VOIP gadget company he started in 2003 with George Oscar Bluth II lookalike Andrew Frame.

To entice potential customers, Ooma created the commercial above to get viral attention about its product. Ooma "creative director" Ashton Kutcher — Mr. Demi Moore himself — produced the clip, which features an unfortunately dressed creepy kid actor and more quick cuts than an anime cartoon. We already had our doubts about the viability of the service. This doesn't help.

Valleywag has already noted the curious resemblance of Andrew Frame, the founder of VOIP startup Ooma, to "Arrested Development" character George Oscar Bluth II, a failed magician. But that's not the only curious resemblance we've spotted, now that Ooma's launched its long-delayed product. It turns out that Ooma's Hub, a $399 pice of hardware for making cheap Internet calls, competes with a $99 product that does the same thing and is already on the market.

When was Ooma, the VOIP startup founded by entrepreneur Andrew Frame and supported by actor Ashton Kutcher, actually founded? Seems like such a simple question. The company says it was founded by Frame in 2005. But former CEO Michael Cerda, in a detailed account, says it actually got started in the fall of 2003. And the Internet Archive shows an Ooma site dating back to 2004. Does it matter? Of course. The age of a startup matters as much in Silicon Valley as the age of a star in Hollywood.

At first I was loath to even join in what Uncov calls the "A-list rub and tug" on Ooma, the telecom startup launched by Andrew Frame, the entrepreneur who looks like a model, and Ashton Kutcher, the Hollywood star who actually was a model. Like its founders, Ooma is all looks, no substance. Launched late, Ooma's product, a piece of hardware that lets you place free phone calls over the Internet, looks set to flop, as insiders predicted, because its creators fundamentally misunderstand both consumers and technology. But at least the box, like Frame and Kutcher, is pretty. Read on to learn why looks don't matter in telecom — and why we're putting Ooma on immediate deathwatch.