Popstar: Never Stops Stopping Sucking

By Katherine Monk

“Dick in a Box” was an undeniable double-stroke of genius for Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake in their legendary Saturday Night Live digital short. But stretch anything too long, and it starts to hurt – no matter how good it was at the beginning.

Popstar: Never Stop Stopping lives up to its title. A never-ending sketch that bleeds until it dies without so much as out-takes, the movie reunites the same team that brought you Dick in a Box: writer-directors Akiva Shaffer and Jorma Taccone, plus Samberg and Timberlake.

The latter two have been pretty busy since that 2006 sketch, but Shaffer and Taccone have been a Lonely Island, and had more time on their hands to write this story of a boy band named Style Boyz: Three childhood friends who make it big, only to break up because the lead vocalist wants to go solo.

You know which character Samberg plays. But guess who plays the other, “forgotten” members of the band, Owen and Lawrence? Would you believe Jorma Taccone and Akiva Shaffer?

I know. Right? It’s like fact and fiction merged into one forgettable collage of pop satire. Cameos from the likes of Carrie Underwood, Mariah Carey, Snoop and Simon Cowell are layered between comic bits from SNL buds such as Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph and Will Forte.

Forte’s appearances are the ones that actually have the most bite, since he’s sending-up TMZ’s frappaccino-slurping hipsters and other social media Perezites. Comics have a long-standing hatred of any breed of star-fuckers, mostly because the majority of them don’t get famous enough to enjoy the star treatment.

Five fingers. Five gags. Andy Samberg does the math as Conner4real, a boy band survivor on the skids.

It all feels like an inside joke for the central cast, who are certainly deriving far more pleasure from the exercise than we are. And how could they not? Wearing rock star costumes, standing before manufactured fans on giant stages, and playing out aspects of their own lives for the camera is the Disneyworld version of psychotherapy.

Sometimes, watching celebrities approach their real world issues on-screen is entertaining: Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. Sometimes, it’s creepy: Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. Sometimes, it’s both. Popstar is neither.

The biggest flaw in the film isn’t that it has no tangible dramatic structure, or the characters fail to evolve in any emotionally engaging way, or that it’s hard to tell fake bad music from real bad music. The insurmountable obstacle is boredom.

Even with Justin Timberlake in a bird suit and endless fodder to be gleaned from the music industry’s collapse, to the mainstream media’s slide into the gutter of celebrity gossip, this movie relies on cameos and vague references to Katy Perry’s sharks from the Super Bowl show for material.

Back together: Stylish and boyish at the same time, Akiva Shaffer, Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone as the Style Boyz

The complete absence of anything substantial or interesting is probably the most interesting thing about it: Popular culture has tumbled so far in the bucket of banal self-reference, there’s nothing left to satirize. It’s all just an empty joke, a selfie delivered with a side of hashtag #funny.

Tim Meadows offers an oasis of grown-up sensibility and worldliness, providing a solid foil for the others. But without him driving the car, we’re left listening to the kids in the back – giggling at their own jokes, making up silly songs and writing their own movie about the boy band that would make them boy-men.

We can indulge the fantasy and spurt of creativity for five minutes. But ninety minutes of stroking the same joke is putting your dick in a box, dragging it across a car window, and digging it six feet under.

@katherinemonk

THE EX-PRESS, June 3, 2016

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