Child Star

Coming into it you expect to hear inside stories and raw emotions from former child stars. Unfortunately you get one child stars story and slightly cooked emotions with the same old stories that we have heard before form Demi. I feel like I barely know the other child stars featured in this documentary, which for something that claimed to show what child stardom is really like and how it affects people later on in life, it doesn't really feel like I got any of that. Christina Ricci, Drew Barrymore, Kenan Thompson, Raven Symone are all amazing actors and whom I wish I got more in depth interviews from. We know Demi's story. Let's hear from some other people. I also didn't learn much of past child stars like Judy Garland or Shirley Temple. The documentary tried to cover over 100 years of child stardom by including current child star JoJo Siwa and the current fascination of YouTube Kids. I didn't really get the meaning or theme behind this documentary. Needed more refinement and a better vision statement.

Famous childstars on average die 14 years earlier and they have a 4 times increased chance of dying by suicide. Those are the grim statistics behind this documentary which gives a detailed insight into the Disney childstar Demi Lovato... whom I have never heard of but apparently she was HUGELY popular.

We mostly get to see demi lovato talk to other childstars (Drew Barrymore and Christina Ricci for instance) and the recurring theme is that almost all of them suffered from their huge fame and started to use drugs and alchohol to cope with a life they had no real control over.

These childstars are being squeezed out for every penny they can make and the more popular they become the more a product they become up to a point that certain childstars became wall street products which could be sold and bought at the stock exchange! Currently the childstar content is valued at over 500 billion dollars.

Incredible to see how these kids are being treated. Money, money and more money is the culprit behind this behaviour towards these kids whose only dream is to become famous, but adults wanna make money of their fame. The way in which money overrules the healthy development of childstars' lives is what this documentary is all about.

This documentary starts out unassuming and without the bleak and grim statistics, but have some patience and please watch it till the end, because then you get to see the real damage done to this famous childstars...

Really liked this. Ive seen demi's other documentaries and i'm usually impressed, but this was definitely the best one. Seeing the same issues, across different generations, they really do only get better in the eyes of law, and worse with the social media and instant access everyone has these days. It was really cool seeing all these faces i recognized from growing up, and how it's impacted their lives. I think overall, i might feel the worst for jojo siwa. Jojo is the first child star, to truly grow up with social media in it's full effect. We saw miley and bieber live with it, and they molded it, but now, jojo is expected to do all of these extra things, on extra platforms. With more merch as things become "trending" online faster than ever. Its honestly baffling. I wish good things for these people.

The documentary is most about Demi, I mean, she's the director and it was her own story who inspired her to make this documentary. The other stars have their part and they're very vulnerable and add a lot to the conversation, and it's good to have different generations on it. It's importante to have more stuff like this. It raises awareness about such important topic. The only negative thing I can think is that maybe they could go deeper, cause Demi has said she was abused on Disney, so I would like they speak about it, but I think it was intentional, maybe she didn't want to go that deep. I enjoyed the doc, it's really easy to digest.

I put this on in the background while I was doing some work...I soon realized I'd stopped working and was just watching. I've not followed Demi Levoto's career, and only know what I know about her through the media. Hearing her story told like that was eye-opening and gave me a new respect for her and what she's been through.

I would have liked to hear more from the other child stars, however I did feel that what they contributed was valuable in painting a fairly clear picture of the impacts of the industry. It also would have been nice to dig a little deeper into child stars of the past as well, however I did appreciate that it included insight people from multiple roles in and around the industry.

Definitely worth a watch!