{"id":1839,"date":"2016-06-03T18:54:14","date_gmt":"2016-06-03T18:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/dev\/?p=1839"},"modified":"2018-09-13T18:56:51","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T18:56:51","slug":"popstar-never-stop-never-stopping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/popstar-never-stop-never-stopping\/","title":{"rendered":"Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This contemporary satire is surprisingly effective. It\u2019s a gross, vulgar mocumentary, packed with sketch comedy featuring your favorite performers from the music biz who help expose the outrageous way pop stars chase fame. Even producer Judd Apatow bares all, for a purpose.<\/p>\n

The filmmakers got everyone who\u2019s anyone to go in on the joke, from Mariah Carey, Adam Levine and Usher, to Pink, Snoop Dogg, Carrie Underwood and Justin Timberlake. You won\u2019t believe how many famous faces are packed back-to-back in this film. It\u2019s amazing! But the bits are woven into a story. It\u2019s loosely based on pop stars like Justin Bieber and how they craft their public image by making self indulgent propaganda pieces. You\u2019ll also see SNL comedy buds Maya Rudolph and Bill Hader and more, plus Tim Meadows and Sarah Silverman as a publicist!<\/p>\n

Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone comprise The Lonely Island, the comedy trio best known for their digital video shorts made for SNL starting back in 2005. They wrote this film together, including almost all of the music. And Schaffer and Taccone co-direct it. Producer Judd Apatow explains that this comedy focuses on making fun of pop stars who make movies about themselves to hype their brand. But in\u00a0this<\/span>\u00a0film, Apatow says, they focus on what it looks like to see a pop star\u2019s life unravel in front of the camera instead of glorify him and his new album. It\u2019s like watching extreme growing pains.<\/span><\/p>\n

The core of the film is about chasing fame. It\u2019s all about Connor, played by Samberg, who\u2019s known nothing but success and adulation since his fictional Style Boyz Band days with best buds Owen, played by Taccone, and Lawrence, played by Schaffer.\u00a0\u00a0Conner\u2019s ego runs amuck and he ditches his buds to grab the spotlight as a rap\/pop superstar. But it backfires when he releases a really stinko album. Success has been the only thing that\u2019s driven Connor, but it\u2019s not bringing him a life worth living. Will he find another way to be both a star and a person worth any of it? Yes, there\u2019s actually a story running through all the cameos, comedy and songs.<\/p>\n

There is so much original music which the Lonely Island Boys wrote for this film. They\u2019ve come up with outrageously creative lyrics to expose the shallowness of songs by pop stars who think they\u2019re just too cool for the room. Samberg, as Conner4 Real, sings songs with lyrics that show incredible ignorance about a number of issues. Simplistic themes are passed off as important thoughts.<\/p>\n

The song about sexual equality which turns into Connor endlessly proclaiming \u201c\u201dI\u2019m not Gay\u201d is spot on.The songs about sexual equality and the song sung by Pink with Conner about LGBT is hilarious. Even Producer Judd Apatow says that one may be his favorite. You may squirm hearing the words as they are sung so earnestly by the superficial characters they play. Even though they may make you feel uncomfortable, you will laugh. We did. The filmmakers have succeeded.<\/p>\n

Taccone explains what they\u2019ve done is simply take what The Lonely Island is good at. They take big fake, slick pop sounding comedy music and make it even more ridiculous and outrageous. A bigger, crazier version of what they\u2019ve done in the past. It\u2019s all fictional characters, but it\u2019s also based very much on the real dynamic of The Lonely Island characters themselves.<\/p>\n

Similarities to Bieber abound. Conner4Real played by Andy Samburg, has a turtle instead of a monkey. There\u2019s also a reference to the Anne Frank house that plays off Bieber\u2019s wildly inappropriate statement about hoping she would have been a \u201cBelieber\u201d if here today, that created controversy. The trailer showing Conner playing drums as an infant is exactly like a scene in Justin’s movie. They both have tattoos, Usher is promoting them and the slogan on this movie is never stop never stopping, which is too like Bieber’s \u201cNever say never.\u201d<\/p>\n

They even poke fun at Apatow and the characters in some of his previous movies and he was fine at being the brunt of the jokes. You\u2019ll get it. It\u2019s no holes barred seeing their over the top version of TMZ shows exposing the superficiality of that kind of reporting. It works.<\/p>\n

Is this worth your bucks? This movie sets the standard for contemporary parody. Even if you\u2019ve never heard of Justin Bieber or watched an episode of the self serving \u201creporting\u201d on TMZ you\u2019ll still find lots to laugh at. If you stop and think about it, the outrageous parody and comedy in this piece isn\u2019t far from what\u2019s really floating in the shallow end of the Show Biz Pool every day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Universal\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 86 Minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0R\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Reviewed June 3, 2016<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This contemporary satire is surprisingly effective. It\u2019s a gross, vulgar mocumentary, packed with sketch comedy featuring your favorite performers from the music biz who help expose the outrageous way pop stars chase fame. Even producer Judd Apatow bares all, for a purpose. The filmmakers got everyone who\u2019s anyone to go in on the joke, from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1841,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1839\/revisions\/1841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}