Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)
Directed by Akiva Schaffer
When his new album fails to sell records, pop/rap superstar Conner4real goes into a major tailspin and watches his celebrity high life begin to collapse. He'll try anything to bounce back, anything except reuniting with his old rap group The Style Boyz.
4 connections found
View:
4 films that influenced this film
What critics say influenced Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
But the bizarre peripheral characters—including a personal chef (Justin Timberlake) who lives to watch Conner eat and a roadie (Bill Hader, completely in his element) obsessed with Flatliners, “the Joel Schumacher film shot by Jan De Bont”—never really mask Popstar’s generic plot, which finds Conner’s DJ and former Style Boyz bandmate, Owen (Taccone), trying to reunite him with Lawrence (Schaffer), the estranged third Style Boy, like a child trying to get his divorced parents back together.
The gags here vary from big set pieces to satisfying runners to tiny, absurd touches; this viewer most appreciated the latter, like when Bill Hader’s roadie explains how he spends his free time “flatlining,” inspired by the movie Flatliners, and there’s just something about the way he off-handedly continues, “directed by Joel Schumacher, shot by Jan De Bont” that is totally irresistible.
Everything about it worked, beginning and ending with its clash of musical form (rage-y "street" cred in the beats) and lyric content (buying cupcakes and catching a matinee of "The Chronicles of Narnia").
"Lazy Sunday" crystallized the troupe's winning musical formula: Ferocious, chest-thumping rap braggadocio in service of silly and self-deprecating lyrics, like eating cupcakes and seeing a matinee of The Chronicles of Narnia.
Instead of clawing at the soul-sucking nature of bad pop music (a la Bo Burnham’s marvelous five-minute track “Repeat Stuff”), “Popstar” makes easy jokes about weed and poop and vacuous celebrities in a way that’s more “ Zoolander 2 ” than “Zoolander.”
This cameo-stuffed mockumentary tries to be the next Zoolander, but it's more of a vanity project for Andy Samberg and his cohorts in the comedy trio the Lonely Island (aka Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, who codirect; all three wrote the script and act in the film).
Although it’s easy to see the Spinal Tap influences in Popstar, a better comparison might be Ben Stiller’s Zoolander .
Personally, I think “Zoolander,” which got mixed reviews, was brilliant, but I couldn’t stand “Anchorman,” “The Hangover” or “Dumb and Dumber,” all massive hits.
Yet the gags aren’t excruciating, as in “Zoolander 2,” a movie equally dependent on sudden celeb cameos and general wackiness.
Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, The Sure Thing, Misery, When Harry Met Sally..., A Few Good Men, all within that span.