Childstar (2005)

hyped garbage

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I loved McKeller's other film "Last Night". Unfortunately, this lame effort is uninspired. We've seen it all before and better. The film doesn't know what it wants to be - is it a comedy, a morality play about fame and the young, is it about parents living through their children, is it about manipulation? The result is a film that doesn't know what it wants to be and in turn, cannot find an audience. Like so many Canadian films, it's just not audience friendly and there is nothing in this film to get anyone but McKeller fans out to watch it. The film just unraveled (badly) and never went anywhere and then needed a long speech at the end to explain a plot we all stop caring about a long way back. The cinematography was excellent but it was wasted in this effort. McKeller can do better and has. Hopefully he can put this failure behind him.

I was amused reading the comments from the last poster on this film describing Don McKellar's performance a third-rate Peter Sellers -- because that's what it is. Unfortunately, unlike the late great Peter Sellers, all Don McKellar film performances are exactly the same. He will never be nominated for an Oscar for his acting, nor his writing or directing. Though there seems to be a tiny group of rich/powerful individuals in Toronto who seem to think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Except for about 10 people in the rest of Canada, nobody else in this country agrees, judging by box office "votes".This film seems to come a decade late. Like most Canadian features, it's warped out of time. Maybe it's two or three decades late. Anyways, the "lessons" at the end are heavily laboured and the characters are tiresome and unlikeable. The points it makes with regards to the corporate Hollywood publicity machine have been made many times before, much more effectively elsewhere.I will give it credit where credit is due: the scenes from the faux film "First Son" are pretty funny. I'll say that. It earns this attempt a couple of points. Hardly enough to redeem this disastrous second effort from Don McKellar the egomaniac "director/actor/writer" however, which falls really flat by any objective measure.

Disappointing follow-up to McKellar's sublime "Last Night" (one of my favorite films of all time) and "Red Violin", this film is about an obnoxious child actor in the mold of Haley Joel Osment, his equally obnoxious stage mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and the hapless indie filmmaker-turned-chauffeur (McKellar) who is assigned to baby-sit them. Minor hilarity ensues from the cross-border (US/Canadian) cultural confrontations and the underage star's affectation of adult nonchalance and knowledge, but not enough to rescue the film, or the viewer. I cannot imagine what possessed the wondrously gifted McKellar to consider such a banal theme. Please regard this as my personal plea to Don McKellar to return to writing and making films of the caliber of "32 Short Films about Glen Gould", "Last Night", and Red Violin".

I just couldn't get into this. Don McKellar, who I've never heard of before, just looked like he was doing an impersonation of Peter Sellers. His deadpan approach was a leaden hand over the whole film. Every line he delivered fell flat on the ground, as in a vacuum. There was something eerily compelling about him though, I couldn't take my eyes off him - or maybe it was just that cardigan he wore under his jacket the whole time.The storyline might have not invited criticism were it not for the fact that we were subjected to two excruciating moral lessons at the end (on parentalism and on the childstar issue). Mmm, thanks, I so need to be preached at - NOT.Unfortunately, Taylor Brandon Burns wasdislikable even when he wasn't supposed to be, and his blonde girlfriend character was just a cardboard cut-out. How were we supposed to care? Well, we were all probably there looking for laughs, not philosophy. Problem is the laughs just weren't there. It was all vaguely depressing.