Childstar (2005)

Billed as an eccentric, funny film, this award-winning Canadian import from director/actor Don McKellar (eXistanZ, The Red Violin) is more drama than comedy; a multi-layered, provocative satire of the movie industry and its self-serving exploitation of child celebrities. Childstar is the story of Taylor Brandon Burns (Mark Rendall), a spoiled 12-year-old American megastar and his self-absorbed mother, Suzanne (Jennifer Jason Leigh), together in Canada while Taylor films a big budget movie. Shockingly insolent on the exterior, Taylor struggles with conflicting emotions of anger and apathy and, at the point of despair, runs away with a prostitute. Enter Rick Schiller (Don McKellar), a hapless indie filmmaker picking up a paycheck as Taylor's limo-driver who is now enlisted to find the boy before he destroys himself. With camera in hand, Rick can't help but see Taylor's life as a movie while he attempts to engage Taylor as a friend. Perhaps intentionally, this movie-about-a-movie-about-a-movie eschews a single raison d'être in favor of many. At times wry, it is also a sobering statement on America's celebrity culture. Most notable is the film's cinematography--artsy, innovative, and, at times, disturbing. With standout performances by McKellar and Leigh, viewers can't miss the message on child stars explicit in the script: "When they hit puberty, we chew them up and spit them out; they spend the rest of their lives entertaining us in the tabloids." Rated R for extreme language and sexual content. --Lynn Gibson Amazon.com

Star (not quite) Struck

A good movie, made that way by good performances, nonsentimentality, and dark comedy (the police raid on Eric Stoltz' house was especially funny). Good performance by Mark Rendall. The movie, overall, was uninvolving. August 10, 2007

Not bad entertainment

Mark Rendall was excellent as the child star and showed he has some range. The film unfolds great catching me thinking it was going one way and it went another. That doesn't happen often and made it enjoyable for me. This is a lite comedy, so don't think is film is going to bust your gut, but I think most people will be entertained. December 21, 2006

We're Just Doin' It for the Kids

What is it with Don McKellar and why do you keep seeing him in the movies? Does he represent some sort of Canadian triple threat like Orson Welles did in the USA? All through the two hours of CHILDSTAR I kept wondering about the casting agents who said, "A perfect fit for our Don McKellar!" To those of you who don't know who I'm talking about, he's in every Canadian movie that manages to cross the border to the US--the so called "nylon curtain." He's a little bit like Woody Allen, with his constant stream of backtalk and non sequiturs and that nerdy intellectual appeal. Except Don's more fit, almost like a real star, with a good figure and a hint of hard muscle. Opposite him, Jennifer Jason Leigh is more appealing than I've ever seen her in a movie, and she's beautiful too, almost as though she had some sort of plastic surgery of the soul, how old is she now, she's still young, but she's gorgeous here as the driven "stage mother" determined to prove the old cliche wrong.

Her little boy, Taylor Brandon Burns, is a huge US sitcom star who acts up on a fictional show called FAMILY DIFFERENCES as the son of omnipresent but goodhumored Alan Thicke. Toronto lures him with the promise of big screen glory as "The First Son" a ludicrous action movie aimed at tweens in which he gets to save the entire Western World and drive a fighter plane to rescue Dad, the POTUS, from a cabal of evildoers who have him tied up and riding a chair on Air Force One. If "The First Son" is more entertaining than the tired satire of CHILDSTAR, who says you have to choose? You get both movies and you get more of them than you want, anyhow.

I was like, WTF Don McKellar, but now I know he's good for me. Sign me up for whatever club he stands for. November 2, 2006

This Star Does Not Shine

So-So story about a man's relationship with a less than pleasant child star and said child star's mother.

Like that old Dickie Roberts movie, it tries to say something about the plight of former and soon to be former child stars, but does not do a good job of it.

Mickey Rooney and Shirley Temple, where are you when we need you?



May 31, 2006

Sad and funny

Childstar is a funny (yet at the same time funny) movie. It has good acting, and an original story. Childstar is a little indie film that's quaint and witty. September 18, 2005

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