The Lonely Island triad (Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone and Andy Samberg) have officially been a comedy crew for more than 15 years, but before they turned pro they were just really good friends growing up together in Berkeley, Calif., making themselves crack up for no good reason.
Forming the official group in 2001, their popular website and videos eventually got them involved with Saturday Night Live in 2005, where Samberg became a featured cast member, drawing in a whole new crowd of fans raised on viral videos and pitch-perfect mockery. They have since produced dozens of videos, comedy albums, and now, a second feature film that finds the trio back to their old tricks, skewering the pompous and egomaniacal charlatans in the music industry, always a favorite target.
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is set up, as the genre practically demands, as a mock documentary, with a young, wildly successful Justin Beiber-like figure, Connor4Real (Samberg), showcasing his lifestyle and wild times on the eve of the release of his latest album and the subsequent world tour that is meant to carry him even farther into the stratosphere ("I want Connor to be everywhere," his publicist, played by Sarah Silverman, explains, "like oxygen, or gravity.").
As the film begins, Connor, who started his career along with best pals Owen (Taccone, dubbed Kid Content) and Lawrence (Schaffer, Kid Brain) in a hip-hop boy band called The Style Boyz, has already gone solo to massive success and stands poised to release his next, hotly anticipated record. He magnanimously allows Owen to tag along with him on tour as his increasingly marginalized DJ, but has a massive falling out with Lawrence, who leaves Los Angeles and turns to farming. Naturally, following the traditional mock-doc music arc lifted from This Is Spinal Tap, what was meant to be a further coronation of Corey's unstoppable success instead becomes a cataclysmic series of pratfalls and self-sabotage that leaves him in the previously uncharted waters of massive unpopularity.
Produced by Judd Apatow, who has a pretty good track record with films that let comedians actually be funny, the shaggy, thrown together vibe of the film allows Lonely Island to liberally pepper it with the kinds of shorts and videos that made them so successful in the first place. There's utterly tone-deaf commercials ("White Butt Jeans," one of Connor's many endorsements), preposterous music videos (including the hilarious "message" video for a song called "Equal Rights" that ostensibly is about embracing gay marriage, but with every verse ending with Connor assuring us confidently "I'm not gay"), cutaway cameos and several comically delicious set pieces, such as when Connor, trying to regain his popularity after a series of mishaps, disastrously proposes to his girlfriend (Imogen Poots) in a staged outdoor event with cherry blossoms blowing in the wind and a pack of live wolves that run amok after being driven nearly mad by Seal singing in the background.
At their best, the Lonely Island boys create memorably catchy nonsense hits, skewering many of the staples and pretensions of the pop music genre (with titles such as "Turn Up the Beef" and "Things in My Jeep") that work precisely because they clearly maintain a genuine affection for the music and the artists they're poking fun at (the reason, one assumes, why everyone from Usher, Carrie Underwood, Nas and Questlove, to a hiding-in-plain-sight Justin Timberlake agreed so readily to appear in the film). The boys have their fun, but they're not trying to crack heads so much as calling attention to the ridiculousness of the entire entertainment complex.
As much as they enjoy poking fun at pop culture, there's a genuine sweetness to their work that keeps things from spilling over into straight denigration (with the possible exception of a TMZ spoof that re-creates the awful "spontaneous staff meetings" of the notorious channel by having all the characters laugh hysterically and nonsensically at anything any of them says). Connor might be dimwitted and a braggart -- one of the film's early showcases features a song he wrote called "I'm So Humble" (#sohumble) in which he lauds himself for his unassuming nature (topped off by a quick cameo from Mariah Carey saying, "I'm the most humble person I know") -- but he's also a slightly goofy, sweet kid whose megafame has twisted him around. When we first meet him, flush from his wild success, he has a posse of yes-men and hangers-on whose job is to pump him up at every turn; by the end, estranged from the other Style Boyz, his beloved turtle deceased, his former fiancee dumping him for Seal, Connor finally sees the error of his ways and begins to make amends.
Despite its silliness, the film does have a mildly centered emotional spine, one that Apatow watchers should well recognize: the importance of staying true to your friends, despite all the pressures that may stand in the way, including Connor's skyrocketing fame, which shoved a wedge between them. In fact, embedded in the film's subtext, it doesn't take much of a stretch to note the similarities between Connor's break-out dominance in the Style Boyz and Samberg's individual rise to fame on SNL. Whether or not the Lonely Island kids ever had this sort of reckoning is unclear -- though doubtful, as they've never stopped working together, even as they've pursued separate projects -- but it's pretty obvious to see how such success can end up alienating you from everything that is most important. As Hunter the Hungry (Chris Redd), a rising hip-hop star, puts it after breathlessly meeting Connor for the first time: "Have you ever met you?"
