Film Review: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

A music-industry Zoolander mixed with This Is Spinal Tap, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a series of SNL’s Digital Shorts combined into a mockumentary. Adam Samberg plays Conner4Real, a popstar with the street cred of Norah Jones, the IQ of Ryan Lochte, and the cultural sensitivity of Avril Lavigne’s ‘Hello Kitty’ video.

Conner’s brand of suburban white boy hip-hop has earned him legions of fans, though it has also created a rift between him and one of the former members of his old boy-band, Style Boyz. Conner, played as a dumb but likable goof by Samberg, is never really the target of Popstar, which instead sets its sights on decimating the business of appropriated hip-hop and celebrity-worship. Tabloids, smug gossip sites like TMZ, sham marriages and corporate sponsors all come under fire, with a nice subplot involving Conner’s music being programmed into fridges and toasters around the country slyly eviscerating U2’s iTunes debacle.

But as Samberg crams the film with cameos of celebrity friends – Justin Timberlake, Maya Rudolph, Sarah Silverman, Simon Cowell, Bill Hader, Usher, Pink, Questlove and countless others appear as Conner’s fans and entourage – the punchline of a star getting a posse to stroke his ego feels slightly ironic.

Unsurprisingly for Samberg, known for his comedy songs ‘Dick In A Box’, ‘I’m On A Boat’ and ‘Lazy Sunday’, Popstar is at its most hilarious when lambasting modern pop songs. A pandering, Macklemore-esque tune, ‘Equal Rights’, sees Conner campaign for marriage equality (“I don’t think he knows it’s legal now,” muses Ringo Starr) while surrounded by beautiful women and obsessively repeating “I’m not gay.”

Amusing but slight, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a collection of great and disappointing sketches that add up to exactly the sum of its parts.