Perhaps it was inevitable that the crew behind The Lonely Island and some of Saturday Night Live’s funniest videos would get their opportunity to put together a full-length piece. For those unfamiliar, the group’s multiple signatures include ridiculous yet somehow perfect lyrics, an array of celebrity cameos, and some great laugh-out-loud gags all within a quick music video. Taking this in mind, their decision to spoof the world of pop music, and more specifically, super-stardom, could not have been a better (one) direction to take in “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.”
We’re a culture oversaturated with celebrity icons we might not even like but who somehow continually make the news until eventually they’re discarded for the next of their kind. Perhaps no pop star is more quintessential to this than Justin Bieber, whose career took a nasty downward spiral and now remains in limbo. So the premise of Popstar essentially mirrors the state of ‘the Bieb’ in a time when it’s likely his career has peaked and yet there is so much more to do. Andy Sandberg plays Conner4Real, the Bieber surrogate, and the other two members of his Lonely Island posse (Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, who also directed the film), play his discarded former bandmates. This is all you really need to know as Lonely Island packs in a dense number of on-point jokes within a brisk 86 minutes.
Of course, the highlight of a Lonely Island movie should be the musical numbers, and here’s where things get a bit tricky for the production. In an effort to capture the blatant stupidity and narcissism seen in pop music, they produce songs that match their level of irritants or ridiculousness. While the film is self-aware to a T, unfortunately even these fake pop songs get old after a while. This is where the film had an opportunity to really take the whole Lonely Island package to the next level, but instead every song feels like a wasted opportunity and a limited level of humor. The rest of the film surrounding it is fun certainly, never dull, but feels like it could have gone even further in terms of making it a laugh-out-loud satire.
The last thing the film achieves in its transition from short video to feature length film is that it manages to wrangle in a massive number of celebrity cameos, many of which have stunning characterized versions of themselves. Sarah Silverman and Joan Allen are some of the only actors involved not playing themselves, and both are given great characters but I fear most of their parts got left on the cutting room floor. There’s a cameo for everybody, but for me, the best one was seeing an indie Sundance director make a blink-and-you’ll-miss appearance that was just as fun a surprise as some of the more brand name appearances. If you’re a fan of Lonely Island you will certainly have a good time at “Popstar,” however, you may find yourself hoping that their next outing can get even bigger, funnier, and more musically catchy than what we have here.
“Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” is rated R for some graphic nudity, language throughout, sexual content and drug use. Now playing in theaters everywhere.
