IFFB: Childstar Reviewed

I met and talked to a young lady who’s an aspiring librarian going to librarian school about Stolen. She seemed to agree that parts of the movie were gripping, but the reenactments of Gardner’s letters dragged and seemed to be there to just fill time.

Back to the same theater for Childstar, a Canadian comedy which premiered at Toronto Film Festival this year. The movie starts out with a bunch of executives in a board room listening to a pitch for a child star film vehicle.

The First Son (the movie inside the movie) is about a 12 year old who gets in trouble at summer camp. His dad, who just happens to be the president of the United States, is called to talk to the camp counselor and comes home to find the White House taken over by terrorists.

"Are they funny terrorists?" a bigwig asks. The screenwriter replies that they are serious. When he realizes this isn't the answer he wants to hear, he says "but they have quirks, they're serious but quirky."

So the president gets taken hostage on Air Force One and The First Son needs to step up and save the United States and the world from the terrorist threat.

So they hire a child star - Taylor Brandon Burns (he has one of those three word names like Jonathon Taylor Thomas) of a hit TV show called Family Differences which stars Alan Thicke as the father.

This movie plays off Hollywood stereotypes and is very funny despite whatever you may read at imdb.com. Taylor arrives at the set and is introduced to so many people that when the director says hello, he questions "And you are?" "I'm the director."

We have the has been party animal who frequents rehab, the over-controlling stage mother played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, and the old veteran actor snob.

Taylor’s mom says "I'm the kind of mother who gets what she wants."

Taylor's driver use to be a teacher but now drives stars. He sleeps with Taylor's mom to get a job driving Taylor full time. His current experimental movie is entitled The Stupidity of God in Progress.

Taylor has to have a tutor on set in between set-ups but no one wants to teach the whiney brat. And of course the driver becomes his teacher by default.

The movie inside the movie is shot entirely with Michael Bay-style crane shots.

When Taylor goes missing, the driver suggests they call the police. Taylor's mom says "No. that would be horrible for his career." When he asks her if anyone has any ill will towards Taylor, she says "Just the crew."

Here's where the Hollywood agents come in playing mob-like bad guys willing to do anything it takes to recover the kid.

Alan Thicke has a great monologue about child stars being the sacrificial lambs, suffering for all our sins.

In all, the movie is a great satirical look at child stars and Hollywood. This is one of those great glossy looking indies, the cinematography was just incredible, almost too good for a movie that is mostly talking heads. This movie deserves a theatrical run, and will most likely get one.

I didn’t stick around for the Q and A after (if there was one) as I had to catch the last train home, which I somehow missed. Don’t worry, I got home sometime around 3:00am.