Starsuckers

This doc from ‘Taking Liberties’ director Chris Atkins received ample coverage recently when it was revealed that the filmmaker had placed false stories about celebrities in the tabloids. The film’s subject is fame: our desire for it and our media’s willingness to feed that desire, even if that means repeating lies or executing sloppy journalism, a particular danger in an age of dwindling resources. That last point was covered more deeply in the book ‘Flat Earth News’ by Nick Davies, who appears in the film to give it some weight, but Atkins is keener to bring  comedy to the subject with a series of stunts that make for amusing if hardly revelatory watching. We have to endure a fictional narrator for a framing device that doesn’t entirely work, but it’s a fun ride through a dark place.