Review: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)

Parody songs were a passion of mine when I was in college. I played Weird Al albums on repeat, and with the rise of YouTube, my friends and I had access to any and every parody song out there. That’s how we came across The Lonely Island, and our collective love for them is one of the things that kept us chatting after college was over. Jack Sparrow featuring Michael Bolton is a firm favourite in the group, if you’ve never heard it I urge you to go straight to YouTube now to find it. These guys are also responsible for Everything Is Awesome from The Lego Movie! Legends.

Anyway, Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer are back, with Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, a movie shot semi-documentary style as a parody of similar movies by the likes of Justin Bieber, etc. The three guys used to be a famous musical trio known as The Style Boyz, known for their most memorable single ‘Donkey Roll’ which came with a dance just as catchy as Gangnam Style. Conner (Andy Samberg) let the fame get to his head, and disputes tore the trio apart, and that’s when Conner started a solo career and became globally successful.

The tone is set almost immediately. There’s a hologram on stage of Maroon 5’s Adam Levine dry humping another hologram version of himself, while Conner sings his hit single ‘I’m So Humble’. It’s just that crazy. It doesn’t stop at Adam Levine, either. I think it’s funnier to witness it yourself, but there are cameos from a crazy number of musical celebrities in this, mostly playing themselves and telling the camera about how Conner’s music inspired them. Another review I read warned not to look up the cameos, and I can’t stress that enough here. Spotting them is half the fun in this movie!

For my fellow British readers, there are a few jokes here that we just won’t get. I’ve actually been watching Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show religiously so when Conner makes an appearance on his show I couldn’t be more delighted, but most of us won’t see that significance. The one I really didn’t get was the CMZ segment, which I know now after looking it up was a parody of celebrity news site TMZ. Other than that, the laughs don’t stop.

There’s nothing I love more in comedies than the jokes that really push the boundary, where your laugh is half ‘this is hilarious’ and half ‘I don’t know if I should even be laughing about this’. That happened to me a few times, such as when Conner visits Anne Frank’s house. Remember the time Justin Bieber visited? Yup. This might just be worse.

Of course, you can’t have The Lonely Island feature in a movie and not have an amazing soundtrack to go with it. The songs are frequent and hilarious, but a few in particular stand out to me, and I’ve already listened to them far too many times (in private, of course). I’d like to pick out some of my favourite lyrics, but we like to pride ourselves on this blog of being strictly PG-13, so I’ll explain the gist of them instead. There’s a song about equal rights in which Conner frequently reminds everyone he’s not gay, there’s a song calling Mona Lisa an overrated piece of...poo, and of course, a song about a girl wanting to be ‘made love to’ just like the US Government ‘made love to’ Bid Laden. 

The plot is predictable of course, and the final third fizzles out a little bit, but the final performance more than makes up for it, especially with the addition of a cameo so amazing that Lonely Island fans everywhere will probably squeal, like I did!

Looking Forward to Seeing in the Cinema: August 2016

Good afternoon from sunny England, where we’re all complaining about the heatwave that arrived shortly after we were all complaining about our lack of Summer. Me? I’m just riding out the hay fever and patiently waiting for Autumn. After a flurry of blockbuster releases in July, this August is shaping up to be a fairly quiet month for new releases. Thank goodness for that, because I’m so behind!

August brings the long awaited release of Suicide Squad, which I know should be my choice for this month, it’ll be great I’m sure, but I’m so tired of superhero movies right now. I’ll go to see it with the gang, probably on the opening weekend, and I’ll come out loving it and telling myself off, but honestly, there’s a movie coming out at the end of this month that I’m dead excited about. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping! I can’t believe how long we’ve had to wait for this. In fact, as I start this post a little early whilst I’m typing this the UK STILL hasn’t had the release of Finding Dory! Ugh!

Anyway, as you all probably already know, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping features the boys from Lonely Island, one of my favourite bands. I’ve also had a little bit of an Andy Samberg crush since getting hooked on Brooklyn Nine Nine this year, so my choice was a no-brainer. It also comes out on my Birthday weekend, which is perfect, other than the near 3 month wait, of course.

I’ve tried as hard as I can to not look up the songs so that they’ll be a surprise, but that’s getting harder every day. One things for sure, this is going to be a soundtrack I’ll want to pick up straight away. I’ve heard there’s some great cameos too. I’m so excited!

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping will be released in UK cinemas on 26th August, 2016.

Review: Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)

As I have reiterated numerous times, I like Adam Sandler, most people don't like him and I will happily admit he has made some terrible films but Hotel Transylvania is one of my favourites so the sequel had to be watched.

It took me ages to eventually watch Hotel Transylvania, but I was surprised at how much I loved it, so I was really looking forward to the sequel.

Hotel Transylvania 2 follows on from the first one with Mavis (Selena Gomez) and Jonathan (Andy Samberg) married with a half human half vampire baby, however Dracula (Adam Sandler) is worried that his monster side hasn't come through yet.  To rectify the situation, Dracula sends Mavis to visit her human in-laws and recruits his monster friends to try to encourage Dennis' evil side to come out.

You didn't warn me the first few scenes would make me cry! I'm deep in the middle of a wedding hotel room drama so anything sweet and wedding related sets me off right now. Watching Dracula and Mavis' sweet moments made me do a bit of an ugly cry.

Straight up, this is not as good as the first one.  The jokes aren't as good and the story is pretty poor, however when it does pull a funny, it was really funny.  I laughed out loud countless times and was thoroughly entertained, no naps in this film!! I left my adult self at the door and spent an hour and a half being a kid again, laughing at fart jokes and trying to work out the which voice belongs to who from various Adam Sandler movies.  I was gobsmacked to find Nick Offerman yet again, that man is literally in everything...ever!  Also, did we know that he is married to the awesome Megan Mullally, why did I not know this?!  I would love to be a fly on the wall in that house!

You also didn't warn me that Nick freaking Offerman was in this! We need to talk. Also I had no idea until now that Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally are married. That's awesome on so many levels!

The animation is fantastic as well, the attention to detail never fails to amaze me in modern animation.  Particularly the scenes with big group, such as the birthday party, there are soo many other things happening in the background, I want to watch it again and again to catch them all.

I really enjoyed the story, although this is another case of the sequel not being quite so good. The jokes were okay, but not laugh out loud for me, other than one moment which struck a weird funny bone for me. That moment when both families are having a big meal together, and there's that phantom of the opera styled guy playing the organ. Someone says something a bit controversial and the organ guy just shouts 'AWKWARD' and I don't know why, but it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen!

Don't overthink it and you'll love it!

Definitely worth a watch, but I prefer the original!