Popstar [2005]

When Erik brought this film to our attention last week, we were a little skeptical. While this Aaron Carter vehicle is not a Disney Channel original movie, its marketing definitely feels like it, and we've had mixed results with DCOMs in the past. Honestly though, because this movie isn't confined by the standards of a DCOM, it had full invitation to be a lot weirder, a little less formulaic, and also slightly horny in an appropriately PG-rated way. Erik also invited his sister Kat who, in spite of being born in 2003, apparently has a lot of feelings about Aaron Carter. Since Adam has always culturally lived under a rock, we started the evening with a viewing of "Aaron's Party (Come Get It)" and a brief Wikipediaing of him to realize that 1.) he is still making music and 2.) he's only 33. Adam, Kay, and Sarah were shook to realize he's our age, but also to realize that he was 18 when he made this movie. Why is that surprising? Partially because he was past his prime at this point but mostly because his costar, seen on the movie cover looking like his mother, is 25 and it's really obvious and distracting. 

As you could probably surmise, the film is about Aaron Carter being a famous popstar who has to go to a normal high school because he's failing his homeschooling. Our geriatric love interest there is the "smart girl" since she got a perfect score on her SATs, but hey, that must be pretty easy when you've been in high school for ten years. I keep emphasizing this point because it was consistently distracting throughout the film. While Aaron Carter may look a little haggard, he still looks like an 18-year-old. Our girl Jane here, is not a young-looking 25 and it is uncomfortable. They also clearly cast the other high school girls with actresses in their 20s to try to make it not so distracting, but even then she still looks incredibly old. Anyway, Aaron, called J.D. in the film, flirts with Jane when he finds out she's smart and then gets calculus tutoring from her. It helps that she's a mega-fan and he has absolutely no problem with her room being covered in pictures of him because he's an egotist. The movie doesn't have much of a plot but instead has a bunch of scenes. Jane gets upset that J.D. won't say they're dating to magazines. The popular girl who always has her entire midriff out tries to blackmail J.D. into going to prom with her (prom never happens in the film by the way). There's a magical janitor played by former pop star Leif Garrett who gets shoehorned into a relationship at the last second with Jane's sister who got left at the alter. A stereotypical nerd keeps asking out popular girls to no success. J.D.'s manager keeps dating young girls but ends up with Jane's mom in the end. J.D. has test anxiety so he takes his calc final alone on a stage. I'm not really putting these events in order, but it also doesn't really matter. The film is more about the vibe.

So how's the vibe? Excellent. The acting is terrible whether it's Aaron Carter's unconvincing reads to the lead actress trying SO hard to seem younger than she is with muffled dialogue and awkward walking. The plot, as you can see, is kind of a mess with too many characters doing too many things and everything wrapped up far too neatly in the last scene. The editing is clearly meant to be creative, but it renders a lot of things ambiguous or incoherent. And I didn't really even get into the vague horniness, particularly of the adult men in the film towards "teen" girls. The early-2000s were a different time. 

This one was definitely worth it. 

Spoon Rating: 7