‘Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping’ is a comedy / mockumentary about the fictional singer Conner4Real and his countless highs and lows throughout his career both as a part of Style Boyz and solo. The film is written by, directed by, and stars Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, and Andy Samberg, otherwise known as ‘The Lonely Island. Headlined by this musical trio the film also stars many musicians who play themselves or fictional characters in various skits throughout that are in similar vein to something you would see on SNL. Surprisingly this film had a lot of humour in there that most of the time caught me off guard, there were many laugh out loud moments and that is all due to the style of humour we are used to seeing from ‘The Lonely Island’. The biggest positive of this film is that for the entire runtime it is always going for the joke, literally always…… but this is also the biggest negative as where there were many good jokes, there were many that didn’t hit, and it did get a little exhausting as the film was nearing an end.
The use of subtle humour in this film was very effective and made for a fairly consistently funny outing from the musical trio. The inclusion of many real celebrities and the skits making fun of shows such as TMZ and music awards in general were some of the best moments of the film making this a very modern take on the music mockumentaries of the past. Unfortunately due to the fact that it is literally joke after joke after joke for an hour and a half it unfortunately did drag after about 2/3 of the way through the film. I believe this would have been a little better it if was a TV special and was 30 minutes shorter but otherwise the humour worked well. The songs in this film were some of the funniest moments as the highly offensive music is similar in style to the songs already written by ‘The Lonely Island’. Definitely the more enjoyable parts of the film that don’t wear out.
There isn’t really much else to talk about with this film. The style of filmmaking and the way it is shot is exactly what you would expect from a mockumentary and they pull it off well. There is plenty of humour throughout the film but due to the constant rapid succession of comedy bits and recurring jokes the film does start to drag towards the end and does get a little exhausting to the point where you are almost waiting for it to end. If you are a fan of The Lonely Island’s music and offensive humour then you will get a kick out of this film, otherwise you may want to stick to something a little more mainstream.
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