Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
Dir: Jorma Taccone, Akiva
Schaffer
2016
***
Popstar: Never Stop Never
Stopping is a pretty good attempt at satirizing the modern day music industry
but it is no This is Spinal Tap. That said, nothing ever will be, This is
Spinal Tap was the first great 'mockumentary', other subjects have been covered
since but none of them, especially not music ones, have been as successful.
However, the music business has changed dramatically since then and the
band in question here are a very different beast. It is written by and stars
Akiva Schaffer, Any Samberg and Jorma Taccone, also known as The
Lonely Island. The comedy trio have been writing comedy for many years and
were hired by Saturday Night Live in 2005. From there, they made several comedy
songs including 'Dick in a Box', Jizz in my Pants' and 'I Just Had Sex’, which
had a huge impact on the internet. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is pretty much a film
version of the fictional band they've been performing as with slight changes
that the viewer can attribute to certain performers that are currently active.
There are also plenty of performers who are happy to appear and send themselves
up, saving the comedians the job and looking good in the process. It was what I
expected it to be if I'm being honest, predictable and a bit of a one trick
pony but it also broke away from many expected clichés and saved all the
shocking moments for when you least expect them. It's not really my kind of
humour but I've always found it tough not to laugh at The Lonely Island's
previous projects and a follow up to the criminally underrated Hot
Rod has been long overdue. It is crude in places but I thought it was
remarkably universal considering all of its naughty bits. Maybe the line
between serious acts and comedy is thinner than it was, satire often struggles
to compete with our media, governments, art and culture these days, maybe
this 'mockumentary' is so successful because it's
pretty much the truth, indeed, watching certain reality TV shows makes Popstar: Never Stop Never
Stopping look like a straight up documentary. The subject aside, the film works
(and is funny) because the writing is so good. Not only that, because it is the
writers who perform their own jokes, they have the integral understanding of
it, and the three old friends bounce off each other perfectly. Sometimes it is
enough just watching friends messing around together. 'Mocumentaries'
certainly aren't an easy thing to get right but The Lonely Island trio have all
the right ingredients to make this work, I'd like them to do something else
non-music related, not necessarily without music but something with a
totally different theme. They've written for so many other comedians it's time
they concentrated on themselves. It was a Box office bomb but they were just
unlucky, it certainly didn't deserve to be.
