And I'm there for each one of them.
The latest I've watched is Smile 2 on Friday night, but that's the second such movie I've seen since the start of April and the third in (approximately) the last year. That third was released just a little over a year ago. Take it back two years and it's at least four.
Those other three, in reverse chronological order, are Mother Mary, Hurry Up Tomorrow and Trap, each of which, like Smile 2, shows the pop star in question involved in some sort of crisis, and in the meantime, strutting their stuff on stage in front of arena audiences of thousands.
In the past decade, you can also include films like Vox Lux and Her Smell. I'm not going to include a movie like K-Pop Demon Hunters, because it's about three musicians rather than one, it's animated, and it isn't going for the same tone.
I suppose there's a little bit of cherry-picking involved here. During this period, there would have been the same number of films, probably more, about other sorts of celebrities, such as actors/actresses and athletes.
But there's something about the pop megastar, usually the female pop megastar (as is the case in all these examples except The Weeknd in Hurry Up Tomorrow), that seems to drive filmmakers to this place of intense darkness and operatic creativity. When we see these pop megastars on stage, there's something about their costumes, their sets, the very songs they're singing, that feels apocalyptic in nature.
At the same time, the thing that makes it so fascinating and profound is that these depictions don't feel inaccurate. Although a typical Lady Gaga concert has its share of joy, of course, there's also something alien by design in the staging of certain songs, something that feels just a bit dangerous -- especially if you are a teenage fan trying to come to grips with your identity, sexual or otherwise, at a very precarious time of your maturation. These films capture the sinister streak involved in the music of most current pop megastars.
And I'm there for each one of them.
It seems a little reductive to make this the focus of a blog post about Smile 2, which I only gave an additional half-star from the original (4 vs. 3.5) but which entranced and scared me enough that I flirted with 4.5 stars. If director Parker Finn went for it with the original Smile, he goes for it even more here, upping the ante on the violence/gore, the disturbing sound design and score, and especially the lead performance by Naomi Scott, who leaves none of her arrows in her quiver on this one. Although at the time it was released in 2024, I was daunted by its 128-minute running time, I am already planning a second viewing just to appreciate its grisly details once more. (In fact, only the length prevented it from being the movie I watched in Singapore on our trip back in 2024. Instead I watched The Wild Robot, of which I was not a fan.)
With all that Smile 2 does right as a movie -- and there are a ton of things -- I don't know that it would have the same impact on me if it were just about an ordinary citizen. Something about Scott's character being a pop star elevates the movie into this extra epic stratosphere, even when it doesn't concentrate as much on the music scenes as movies like Mother Mary and Trap. (And I should stop to clarify that those two movies have some other issues, but the music sections are not part of the problem.)
I feel like I will continue to see movies like this popping up in the cinematic landscape, and next time, I won't let length alone delay my viewing for two years.
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