Superstar Review
by Eugene Novikov (eugene47 AT my-deja DOT com)October 22nd, 1999
Superstar (1999)
Reviewed by Eugene Novikov
http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
Member: Online Film Critics Society
"You might not want to say 'Superstar' anymore because some people might say that you super suck."
Starring Molly Shannon, Will Ferrell, Elaine Hendrix, Mark McKinney. Rated PG-13.
I love Saturday Night Live. The legendary variety show has slipped a bit in consistency of late, but it's still the smartest, funniest 90 minutes on tv. The good thing about the show -- and head honcho Lorne Michaels is still not getting this -- is that the laughs come in four minute skits. That's right, four minutes. Four, not ninety. When a concept that can barely fill four minutes with laughs is stretched to more than twenty times that length, very bad things happen. Those bad things are called "SNL Movies".
There have, actually, been a couple of successful ones. The Blues Brothers was a hit, and Wayne's World developed an inordinately large fan following, though I didn't really like it. But they were followed by abominations such as Wayne's World 2, It's Pat! (a title eventually tagged with "but who cares?") and A Night at the Roxbury, proving that a variety sketch is not the best model for a feature-length movie. And yet the saga continues with Superstar, which earns points for breaking the gender barrier but quickly loses them for being, well, not very funny.
Whether she likes it or not, the film belongs to SNL vet Molly Shannon who plays Mary Katherine Gallagher, an unpopular schoolgirl with dreams of big-time stardom and fantasies about the French-kissing the school hunk (Will Ferrell). Her dream is to become famous so she tries out for her Catholic School's talent show ("Cheerleaders Fight VD"). Being the most unpopular girl in school, she is mocked and jeered at every turn, except, of course, by the school psycho (Harland Williams) who inevitably turns out to be a sweet and tender "big lug".
There are obstacles everywhere, from Mary's grandmother who wants her to be a business woman, to the nasty Evian ("Go drink a bottle of yourself," Mary exclaims), the head cheerleader whose goal in life is to make Mary miserable. Can she hop over all the hurdles in her path and become a Superstar? What do you think?
There is something inherently amusing about watching 40-year-olds play high-schoolers (not to give any bright minds in Hollywood any ideas), and I liked the fact that they let Shannon, a woman, do all-out Carrey- style full body humor. In fact, Shannon is a funny and talented actress, but she is stuck with a script that makes her rerun the same gags over and over until even she looks like she is about to bail. Superstar is intermittently amusing, but those moments are few and far between. It's full of jabs at Catholicism (I'm surprised the ubiquitous and rather blind to reality Catholic League didn't make this film a prime target of its protests; at times, it's downright offensive) that aren't particularly clever, just mean-spirited.
Superstar is redundant, repetitive and not particularly amusing, with an unacceptably low gag-to-laugh ratio. A gleeful spirit surrounds the film's star, but she is lost in a meandering plot and an unsatisfying screenplay. I have a feeling that sooner or later she will get the project she deserves; for now, she'll have to settle at making us laugh on tv, forgetting this misguided production as quickly as possible. Shannon is a veritable superstar already. This was the last thing she needed.
Grade: C
©1999 Eugene Novikov
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