Superstar Review
by John Carroll (flyers130 AT aol DOT com)October 10th, 1999
Reviewing movies is such a tough job. You know, sitting there watching the movie. Thinking what is right and wrong. And the thing that bothers me them most is that whole part about sitting through the whole movie. That was the latest fret I had as I sat through Superstar, an SNL movie that is so blatantly dumb, it is a shame that it was not intended that way.
Superstar is based on the Saturday Night Live sketch of Catholic schoolgirl Mary Katherine Gallagher. The part is played by Molly Shannon, arguably the funniest female performer on the current SNL cast. However, most sketches that have been put onto the big screen have failed miserably. Superstar follows in that path, despite an admirable performance by Shannon.
The plot of Superstar is pretty simple: Gallagher is a child striving for a kiss with the stars of Hollywood. So, she decides she needs to become a Superstar herself to accomplish this task. Unfortunately, Superstar continually strays from this plot and travels into pointless scenes that add absolutely nothing to the main plot.
To get one thing out of the way, the performance of Shannon is not all that bad. She created the Mary Katherine Gallagher character and does an admirable job of trying to make the film funny, but one person cannot save a sinking ship, and Superstar sinks fast. Will Ferrell, arguably the funniest male performer on SNL co-stars with Shannon in Superstar as Sky Corgan, the star she wants to kiss. Unfortunately, Ferrell gets no laughs. None. Undoubtedly, he has the worst performance in the film. But, it is definitely not all of his fault, something I will talk about later.
The rest of the cast does nothing to add to this movie. Tom Green, star of MTV's The Tom Green Show, plays one of Sky Corgan's friends, but just like Ferrell, his immense talent is wasted in Superstar. Elaine Hendrix plays Evian, the snotty and bolemic girlfriend of Sky Corgan and Mary Katherine's archnemesis. She tries to make fun of herself, but fails, just like the film itself. Harland Williams plays Slater, the guy who has had eyes for Gallagher all along and Mark McKinney plays the Mary's principal. They try, but fail. The sad part is that this film had the chance to be funny, but the script continuously fails.
I just cannot explain it any further. The script for Superstar is just plan stupid. Not stupid funny, like There's Something About Mary, but just plain stupid, like The Haunting. The film tries to be to serious with its comedy and, in essence, denies itself of what it really is: an SNL sketch. As I said earlier, the plot continually veres off into terriotory that serves the movie no purpose whatsoever. In fact, they even introduce a Maryesque dog to get some comedy, but it is more pathetic than it is funny.
In the end, Superstar's laughs are few and far between. Tom Green has one hilarious salad sketch, Shannon is clever with her "monologues" in confession and the Full Monty spoof was probably the funniest part of the whole movie. Besides that, Superstar is dull, boring and just not funny. I have gotten more laughs out of a regular, ten-minute SNL sketch of Mary Katherine Gallagher than I did from Superstar. And on a final note, Gallagher's finger sniffing, which made her sketch so popular, is done twice in the whole film. I will use a quote from Superstar to sum it all up: It "Supersucks."
One and a Half Stars Out of Four Stars
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