Vite da popstar

For a satire like this to work, it needs to have its heart in the right place. I was hesitant when watching the trailers, but fortunately the film doesn't lose track of the bigger humanization with these characters and it wears its heart on its sleeve. But perhaps that's also why it didn't go as far as it could have gone, and when all is said and done, perhaps plays things a little too safely. Still, it's vastly entertaining and the performances are aces. Andy Samberg excels at the comedy but also on making the lead a very likable protagonist, no mater his flaws. It's very easy to root for him. As a whole, definitely go seek this out and recommend it to your friends. Very underrated film that deserved to be bigger.

The big question heading into "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping" was whether The Lonely Island trio of Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer could make their brand of pop music humor work in a format that lasts longer than three minutes. Not surprisingly, it's in different three-minute clips that "Popstar" works best.

"Popstar" is a music mockumentary following a pretty standard faux biography structure: Conner4Real (Samberg) is a huge star who made it on his own after many of years of success as a member of the Nasty Boyz, a trio with his childhood best friends, Owen (Taccone) and Lawrence (Schaffer). The story predictably follows his rise and fall, narrating it with a host of cameos from actual music celebrities playing themselves as well as supporting characters.

Conner is an over-the-top caricature of the dumbest celebrity you can imagine, and Lonely Island makes sure that there's no element of his music or rise to fame that you take seriously. Ripping into pop music culture, however, isn't the movie's focus. It's a film about a music group because its creators' gimmick is musical comedy. The goal, presumably, was to create outrageous characters and scenarios, not create stinging satire.

"Popstar" opts for the machine gun style of comedy, unloading jokes in rapid succession knowing that if at least a majority of them stick, they've done their job. Ostensibly, that strategy works. A number of gags land and feel like rather original jokes, too. From a wolf attack to a wardrobe malfunction to an argument in a limo that's besieged by naked body parts, the sequences constructed with the intention of being funny often are, it's the wedged-in jokes that aren't centerpieces that fall flat.

Surprisingly, the comedy songs used in this movie aren't the highlights. Conner's single about equality in which the lyrics are all about how he's not gay even though he's singing about LGBTQ rights is pretty standard for Lonely Island. Fans of their music will be pleased, but the comedy really comes from the joke-writing and the occasional quick-witted dialogue exchanges.

Nothing about the plot is surprising or particularly clever, however, and knowing exactly what direction they're going to take the story within the first 10 minutes weighs down the ceiling for what "Popstar" could be. If more jokes missed than hit, this flaw would be abundantly apparent and have caused the whole movie to collapse.

The Lonely Island brand of cleverly packaged immature humor won't be a hit with everyone, but it definitely salvages "Popstar," at least enough that I can highly recommend the clips.

~Steven C

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Ridiculously underrated. Despite not doing good box office numbers, it remains a hilarious movie

Look, I love Andy Samberg. But, his comedy just didn't carry the movie far enough for it to be good. But, I will say this movie is good to just watch with friends and not pay much attention to. But sitting down to watch it is just eh.

I was a teenager when Lonely Island were big, so they were right up my alley at the time. Now, I feel like half their initial catalogue has diminished, with a few songs ('Jack Sparrow', 'Boombox') still standing strong against the waves of time and maturity.

'Popstar' also isn't as good as I remember, though I think for different reasons. In an age where pop culture and even politics are brought to a an extreme where satire feels pointless, I can't help but feel that the point of the film is diminished.

So what's left are the songs, and few comedy sequences that still hold out. Fortunately, the songs are (mostly) fantastic. The 'Bin Laden' song in particular is so absurdly funny that it's almost worth watching the movie alone for it. There's a few that didn't make it to the film as well, to be found on their YouTube channel.

Quite a few of the jokes are funny, until they're overexplained after they land (as in, the jokes are made and then there's an extra line or two that seems rather superfluous, unneeded, and I'd go as far as to say redundant).

The film is such a snapshot of what celebrity culture was like in the mid-2010s, even extending to the landscape of American comedy with its relentless cameos.

So, regarding that aspect, and remembering how much fun I had the first time watching at release, I do hold the film in a higher regard than it probably deserves.