Quaid Army, your time has come. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is now streaming on Netflix. Your mission, dear quaids—should you choose to accept it—is to give this brilliant Lonely Island comedy a long-overdue second life on streaming. Now that would be a truly righteous kill. (And if you’re a total Hauser who doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about it, go ahead and give The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast a listen. It’s guaranteed to add some laughter to your week.)
Written by the Lonely Island comedy trio—aka Saturday Night Live alums Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone—and directed by Schaffer and Taccone, Popstar is easily one of the best comedies of the 2010s, if not of all time. It’s a pitch-perfect parody of self-indulgent musician documentaries, starring Samberg as Connor4Real, a narcissistic pop star who ditches his Beastie Boys-esque boy band (Schaffer and Taccone) in pursuit of a solo career. The movie is filled to the brim with hilarious cameos from real musicians (Ringo Starr, Usher, Akon, Nas, Snoop Dogg, just to name a few) and new, catchy, instant classic Lonely Island songs (“Finest Girl,” “Equal Rights,” “Mona Lisa,” just to name a few). The joke-per-minute ratio is off the charts, with not a second of wasted screen time. On top of all that, it’s a touching story about success, friendship, and creative collaboration that mirrors the Lonely Island boys’ own journey.
Critics liked the film, and comedy fans loved it. But, sadly, by the time the movie hit theaters in 2016, mid-budget comedies were already trending downward at the box office. It was the height of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars reboots. Samberg later said he felt the film was marketed too heavily as a Justin Bieber parody, rather than a broader music mockumentary. Whatever the reason, Popstar made less than $10 million worldwide and was written-off as a box-office bomb.
But there’s still hope. Now and then, a clip from the movie still goes viral on social, and fans lament how criminally under-rated the Popstar masterpiece is. Clearly, there’s still an appetite for the film online, and now it’s available to stream on the most popular streaming service, aka Netflix.
Movies that fail to make a splash at the box office can thrive on streaming. Sometimes, movies can do so well that it even convinces studios to take another look at films written off as a financial disappointment. That’s what happened to 2018’s A Simple Favor, after all, which did OK at the box office, but really took off when it began streaming on Netflix. Another Simple Favor director Paul Feig recently told IndieWire that the first movie’s high viewership on Netflix was one of the reasons the sequel was ordered up for Amazon.
Yes, Popstar has been on streaming before, and yes, the movie is almost 10 years old at this point. But this time, we have a secret weapon: The loyal Quaid Army. C’mon, quaids. Who’s a Kuato gotta blow around here to get Popstar trending on Netflix’s Top 10 movies list?
Watch Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping on Netflix.