Child Star is a documentary that focuses on issues of stardom within the coming-of-age contexts directed by Demi Lovato and Nicola Marsh, that captures its audience from the very onset as there is a direct confession made.
Lovato is one of the celebrities who come out and tell great stories and she estimates that when she was roughly four years old, she was staying with her great grandparents and watching a Shirley Temple movie, and it was this moment that made her say: I wanted to be the youngest and the best at what I do.
Such an aspiration, which is not an unusual sentiment that most young aspiring actors, singers and just young people in any industry have about making it big and achieving their goals, is the ever present monkey’s paw curse of Child Star (the title of this movie bears resemblance to the 2001 biopic Child Star: The Shirley Temple Story). Although the film offers a vent through which many actors who are relatively well-known for the sheer age at which they began acting, explained how or why that changes the way people perceive themselves and the world around them completely.
Most parts of the Hulu film that will be launched on Sept. 17 consist of loving and careful interviews with the director and her interlocutors, which in their own right are to be viewed for the unique perspectives they offer into the making of shows and films that shaped a generation.
Drew Barrymore and Christina Ricci discuss finding father and mother figures among the established Hollywood elite, including Steven Spielberg and Cher. According to Kenan Thompson, practically all of his money made at Nickelodeon TV shows was embezzled by a shady accountant. Another Disney actress, Raven, is in a similar situation with Lovato, claiming about dissociative periods while working in the family shows. Siwa is frank about the consequences of coming out, which were missed career moving opportunities. Chris Columbus, who made Home Alone and the 2 Harry Potter movies, provides an inside view about what happens to young stars when they become superstars.
Lovato, together with Alyson Stoner, who participated as co-star of the film in the Camp Rock, shares some of the most exposing scenes of the picture, yes, they do discuss “She’s really good!” ‘DisneyHigh’ is a phrase coined by young Disney stars, making fun of their substitute for a real high school, which consisted of taking lessons at the set, coupled with love triangles among cast members all the while suffering from eating disorders and enduring endless pressure.
Amid these conversations, some of which are held in subdued cafes or on a couch in someone’s house, the film highlights a child star-ification trend in the Hollywood system as progressing further than before. In her case, she achieved great success on the Disney channel at a specific period that many of the company’s shows and films were made for aspiring children.
The Cheetah Girls, Hannah Montana, and Lovato’s show about showbiz, Sonny with a Chance, all came out in the 2000s, where they provided an idea to their young fans of what it feels like being a star when you are a teenager. There was repeated trauma experienced by many of these actors as they firstly received constant praise from the industry and later were abused, ostracized and bullied by their peers, as well as the fans.
The text also alludes to the phenomenon of children growing up on social media, without the protective measures Hollywood can offer owing to regulations developed over the years to prevent the exploitation of young stars. (As recently as last year, the law was amended to allow a child influencer to sue the parent for enjoying the child’s income when the child was an influencer.) Barrymore puts it the best when she quips that child actors are in the most basic essence “commodities.”
Child Star is somewhat satisfying, in a perspective, but never particularly disturbing. And when it does address something serious –such as eating disorders or drug addiction, or self-harm for instance, it does so cautiously, avoiding placing blame upon anyone or anything in particular as having cause for it. (Especially because here’s the reason why Hulu is a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company.)
The true crime docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which was released a few months before this one, has shifted its focus to the sexual harassment encounters many of the former child actors who worked for Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider, revealed.
While Child Star is not a documentary nor is it aimed at pin-pointing blame on any individual or entity, it does claim that young children are targeted in the process of making the film as it is an industry with strong potential for being exploited.
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