‘Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping’ Review: The Lonely Island Makes ‘Spinal Tap: The Next Generation’
It’s been more than 30 years since This Is Spinal Tap hilariously mocked the pop music scene and launched the mockumentary subgenre. If there can be such a thing as a “spiritual remake” of an old movie, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is it. It takes the same basic structure as Spinal Tap (a fake documentary about life in the music industry) and its narrative framework (a formerly hot pop acts fall from grace) and layers in a whole new generation of jokes about dopey celebrities in the age of social media. It doesn’t break any new ground, and it might not even be its creators’ most effective satire of this subject, but it is funny.