By Ezra Stead
POP-U-larity!, USA, 2012
Directed by Michelle Ehlen
Michelle Ehlen’s POP-U-larity! is a reasonably enjoyable light comedy that satirizes modern singing competition shows such as American Idol and The Voice. It is filled with strange, amusing characters and moments of genuine humor, but unfortunately most of its best material is used up in its first half. By the time the inevitable competition happens, the film and its characters have worn out their welcome and, for the most part, become somewhat grating. More than anything, it feels like an extra low-budget take on Christopher Guest’s largely improvised mockumentaries, such as Waiting for Guffman (1996) and Best in Show (2000), with the small-town quirkiness of Guffman at the forefront.
POP-U-larity! is at its best in its first act, when it introduces its wildly varied characters and their respective quirks and self-delusions. Ehlen, who also co-wrote the film with J.C. Peterson, stars as the film’s ostensible protagonist, a cowgirl named Charlene Hornsby who feels a deep affinity for one of her horses, Beth; she says of the other horse she tends, “We’re not close.” The writing and delivery of lines like this provides some of the film’s best humor, and many of the scenes involving two other competitors, Darque (Krys Fox) and Ness (Thessaly Lerner), are even better. Performing together as “Darkness,” the two bring a pot-addled, pseudo-nihilistic edge to the competition with their unlistenable melange of noise created by banging on random household objects while shouting a bizarre, stream-of-consciousness rant about the meaninglessness of life over the cacophony. A second act argument between the two of them about their artistic direction is undoubtedly the movie’s best scene. Read More
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