10 Years Ago, Audiences Failed Lonely Island's Popstar - Today It's A Perfect Cult Classic
On June 3, 2016, the funniest movie ever made hit theaters, and none of you went to see it. Boo! Hiss! Shame!
That sounds hyperbolic, and I'm only sort of exaggerating. That particular June 3 marked the release of "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping," one of only a handful of movies crafted by the group known as The Lonely Island: Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer, whom you might know better as the trio behind the "Saturday Night Live" digital shorts. Those other two movies — "Hot Rod," which was originally written by Pam Brady as a vehicle for Will Ferrell, and "MacGruber," a deliciously insane full-length version of an "SNL" sketch — flopped hard at the box office, and so did "Popstar." Thankfully, it's been correctly reappraised as a cult classic, and I'm here to tell you precisely why you need to drop everything you're doing right this very second and watch "Popstar."
If you have even a passing familiarity with "SNL" Digital Shorts, you know the brand of humor you can expect from The Lonely Island ... and you know that they're genuinely phenomenal at writing musical comedy. To be clear, musical comedy is hard. A lot of is atrocious. (Anyone doing outright parody songs whose legal name is not Al Yankovic should probably pay a hefty fine. Mr. Yankovic, by the way, is in this movie!) The Lonely Island excels at it for one reason: The music is actually good, and they take it seriously in a way that translates into some straight-up brilliant jokes that just so happen to be delivered via song. That's why "Popstar" centers around a fictional pop star named Connor4Real (hilariously, his actual name is Connor Friel) played by Samberg, who we follow throughout a ... tumultuous time in his career. (It's awesome.)
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is one of the funniest movies ever made, and that's a fact
When "Popstar" begins, Connor has enjoyed the immense success of his first album — which, incredibly, is called "Thriller, Also" — and ready to release "Connquest," his highly-anticipated follow-up. Throughout the movie, we watch as "Connquest" gets absolutely bodied by critics — as Connor reveals to the documentary filmmakers, one review simply gave it a "s**t emoji" instead of any stars or a numerical rating.
But along the way, we learn about how he rose to fame as the lead singer of the Style Boyz, a group he started with his childhood best friends Lawrence "Kid Brain" Dunn (Akiva Schaffer) and Owen "Kid Contact" Bouchard (Jorma Taccone). (Schaffer and Taccone split directing duties and co-wrote the film with Samberg.) Early in their careers, Connor betrayed Lawrence by claiming that Connor's "catchphrase verse" that made him famous was written by Connor with no help whatsoever from Lawrence, which couldn't be further from the truth; Owen stuck around as Connor's DJ.
It's going to be hard for me to fully explain "Popstar" within the parameters of this piece, because truthfully, I could write a 25-page thesis on why it's the funniest movie made this century. There's the entire bee scene (which, according to a Rolling Stone oral history of the film, was originally a lot longer). The music is second to none, from the hesitant gay anthem "Equal Rights" (where Connor keeps reminding the listener he's not gay while celebrating queer love) or "Finest Girl (Bin Laden)" (where Connor sings about a tryst where the woman asks for something really specific). I'm not even mentioning the cameos — Ringo Starr! Emma Stone! Nas! — or the lithpy tribute to Spain in "Ibitha."
"Popstar" is perfect, and it holds up.
After 10 years, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping holds up ... and Jorma Taccone agrees for one specific reason
If you haven't ever seen "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping," I'm actually jealous of you! This movie never fails to make me laugh or put me in a good mood, and the sheer volume of good jokes is absolutely wild. (I've heard rumors for years that there's still a ton of unseen footage, and to be honest, I need to see all of that now.) At the end of the day, though, there's a strange earnestness to "Popstar," a movie that's ultimately about the power of enduring friendship when Owen, Lawrence, and Connor finally reunite as the Style Boyz at the Poppy Awards, a clear stand-in for the Grammys. (Connor only gets invited because "Taylor Swift was arrested for murder," and as a Swiftie, I actually think that joke has aged all too well.)
In that Rolling Stone oral history, Jorma Taccone said they haven't really discussed a sequel, but he, Andy Samberg, and Akiva Schaffer are real-life best friends, so they'll probably just do something else. "We're always gonna be connected. Obviously I'd love to be able to do something new with those guys," he said. "When it's the three of us, it really is kind of where the magic is." That's when he got to the real heart of "Popstar," though:
"I mean, it's partially a real story. That's one thing I remember in rewatching part of it was being like, 'Holy sh**, we got away with making an entire movie about the three of us being friends. We have, like, a document of us talking about our friendship for all time.'"
"Popstar" is a movie about friendships filled with the best kind of stupid jokes, and it's sublime. Go appreciate it now.