Internet Famous (Michael J. Gallagher, 2016)
Imdb
Date Watched: 6/23/16
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: Shane Dawson
Rewatch: No Yeah, yeah, I know. 99% of you probably have no ****ing clue who Shane Dawson is. And the other 1% is Funny Face who has received video links in her inbox, has listened to me fangirl about him for a few weeks now, and is being dragged to San Francisco with me next month for one of his book signings. Because I have no life and I have an addictive/obsessive personality and Dawson happens to be my latest obsession.
Anyhoo, this movie is a mockumentary about a bunch of YouTube stars who are competing for the chance to get their own television show. Shane Dawson is an actual YouTube star who has made countless videos, written two books, and directed a movie (
Not Cool, which I reviewed previously). In
Internet Famous, he plays an ultra-douchey parody version of himself. The real Shane Dawson is known, among other things, for doing parody music videos (often in drag) and also a lot of collaboration videos with other YouTubers. These collab videos more often than not end up being quite homoerotic. Dawson's scenes in this movie played heavily on these things (including a joke about "tickle fight" videos, which Dawson actually
did with another male YouTuber a couple years ago) and plays on the tendency for the comments section of his videos to be full of fans "shipping" him with his collaborators. His performance in the film was very tongue in cheek and I liked it a lot.
Unfortunately I can't really say the same for the rest of the movie. I tend not to be a fan of comedy films in general so it had that going against it. Most of the film was just awkward AF and not in a way that was funny to me. Perhaps if I was more immersed in the whole YouTuber culture thing it might've resonated with me more, but I'm not and it didn't. There were other caricatures of other types of YouTube stars - a guy who makes cat videos, a guy who makes baby videos, a girl who makes videos in slutty costumes, and the star of a random viral video who did this super awkward dance. I don't know if any of the people playing those parts are actual YouTube stars (other than the
Chocolate Rain guy who played himself as a celebrity guest "mentor" for the competition), but their performances and characters just didn't work for me.
This is a pretty low budget film made for kind of a niche audience, so I can't say that my expectations were particularly high, but I was still hoping for a little more. I didn't hate it, but obsession or not, I probably won't ever watch it again or any other movie Dawson is in for that matter. I think I'll stick with his videos and books from now on.