Film #083 - Superstar (1999)
Viewed March 24, 2006
Honestly, it was Will Ferrell that made me finally watch Superstar. Although I have felt for some time that Molly Shannon is a gifted performer, her Saturday Night Live character Mary Katherine Gallagher has always irritated me (along with most of her SNL characters, and Ferrell’s, and most of SNL post-Phil Hartman, for that matter). But I was told that Ferrell (who has gained my fandom through films like Elf and Anchorman) was in good form in Superstar, so I bit.
I have already stated that I never liked the Mary Katherine character and Shannon does little to change that opinion. Her mannerisms and obsessions are irritating in and of themselves, but the screenwriters also feel the need to highlight every one of them. (Look! She’s doing that armpit thing she does!)
The plot (Mary Katherine’s attempts to become a “Superstar” and get a kiss from Ferrell’s Sky Corrigan) lacks originality. The sub-plot revolving around loner Eric Slater and his mysterious connection to Mary Katherine is even more dull. These plots could work, of course, if they had been given a nice sheen of irony or had been treated as a parody. But the filmmakers seem to take the whole thing way too seriously.
That’s not to say the whole endeavor is a waste of time. Unoriginal though their characters may be, Ferrell and Williams are able to milk a noticeable amount of laughs out of what little the script gives them to work with. Ferrell especially comes through with a dual role, since he also plays Mary Katherine’s visions of Jesus. (Or, as he more accurately puts it, a combination of Sky and Mary Katherine’s idea of Jesus.)
Other supporting roles are filled in the most obvious and uninspiring ways. From Mark McKinney’s Father Tylnol Ritley (gah!) to Elaine Henrix’s Evian (mary Katherine’s rival) to Emmy Laybourne’s Helen Lewengrub (Mary Katherine’s only friend), they all just do their bit to keep the movie going, never really elevating the material.
Superstar, unfortunately, walks the well-worn the path taken by so many films before it: The Coneheads, A Night at The Roxbury, The Ladies Man… It tries to take a premise that could (sometimes barely) hold an audience’s attention as a five minute skit and expand it to feature length. They all try to be Wayne’s World. But the difference is that Mike Myers had a huge backstory for Wayne before he ever put him into SNL, while these notions were best left on the small screen. It’s no wonder that Ferrell has thrived the most when he is far away from the characters from his days on SNL.