Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
Starring Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone
Directed by Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer
Celebrity culture and social media get lambasted and lampooned, sometimes brilliantly, in The Lonely Island’s latest big screen offering Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. Mashing scathing satire, preposterous parody, and an extended episode of Behind the Music, Andy Samberg and co.’s mockumentary boasts an incredible amount of jokes edited together at a breakneck pace. The results are a frequently hilarious and sometimes acerbic looks at what it means to be a pop star in today’s interconnected world.
Samberg stars as Conner4Real, a world-famous singer going through a sophomore slump who must claw his way back to stardom. Laced with more than a dozen cameos from various musicians and performers playing themselves, the film also features solid support from Tim Meadows and Sarah Silverman. It’s easy to see the likenesses of Justin Bieber and Kanye West being mocked throughout but Popstar also manages to plentifully poke fun at this generation’s obsession with social media and how commercialized the current music industry has become.
Of course, scenes involving bloodthirsty wolves ruining a wedding party or Samberg singing that Mona Lisa is “an overrated bitch” ensure there is enough lowbrow humour to spare. With a runtime under 90 minutes, Popstar never overstays its welcome. Even if not every sequence quite hits the mark, the movie criminally underuses the comedic talents of Joan Cusack as Conner’s mom, the pointed zingers throughout make the missteps all the more forgivable. Everyone involved in the film seems to be having a blast and the audience will too.
