Twelve year-old Taylor Brandon Burns (Mark Rendall), star of the hit sitcom "Family Differences" (which also stars, in a clever bit of intertextuality, Alan Thicke of "Growing Pains"), is everyone's favorite preteen—everyone, that is, except for the people who have to work with him. When Taylor lands the lead as the president's son in an overblown Hollywood blockbuster, the studio decides to film in Canada for the sole purpose of exporting the obnoxious diva. Taylor's blasé mom, Suzanne (Jennifer Jason Leigh, PALINDROMES), promptly seduces their new driver, Rick (Don McKellar, HIGHWAY 61), who has only taken the job to fund his experimental film work and who has never even heard of Taylor. Rapidly embroiled in Suzanne and Taylor's lives, Rick is the one the film's producer (Dave Foley, "The Kids in the Hall") blames when Taylor winds up missing. In a gleeful send-up of the complicated filmmaking relationship between America and Canada, this satirical comedy pokes fun at the excesses of the Hollywood studios that scorn art in favor of empty "patriotic" drivel. But at the heart of the satire is a cutting critique of a society that claims to revere its children while exploiting an endless series of cute faces for entertainment and profit. Childstar explores both the comic and the poignant territory where child-worship and child-hatred intersect.作者: kaka22 时间: 2005-4-20 12:07