After starring in movies like Monster, Black Snake Moan and Anchor Bay’s upcoming creepfest After.Life where she plays a girl who supposedly wakes from the dead, Christina Ricci will be making a welcome return to comedy in Born to Be a Star. Though the Columbia feature is more grown up than Mermaids, the pair of Addams Family movies and Now and Then that Ricci compiled on her acting resume early on, Ricci is no longer ten-years-old and can star in an animal like Born to Be a Star to comedic effect.
From Happy Madison Productions, Born to Be a Star is about a small-town nerd (Nick Swardson), who learns a devastatingly hilarious secret about his quiet and conservative parents: In the 1970s, they both were huge porn stars. Once realized, our hero leaves his home in Northern Iowa for Hollywood, where he hopes to not only follow in his parents’ footsteps, but become the world’s biggest adult-film star as well. In the movie, Ricci plays the nerd’s sweet and naïve girlfriend.
Born to Be a Star marks the second big feature in recent memory to be based around the porn industry. In late 2008, Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks starred in Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno. The $24 million R-rated laugher ended with $31.5 million in U.S. theaters and a small $5.4 million overseas. It was received generally favorably from critics, scoring a 65% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Zack and Miri’s comedy may be unrelenting and in your face, but I found Rogen and Banks’ chemistry very sweet, too. And who seriously could watch Justin Long’s cameo as a gay porn star without busting a gut? It may very well be impossible.
Based on its premise – and the people working behind the scenes – Born to Be a Star seems like it will be the slapstick stepchild to Zack and Miri. The feature’s director, Tom Brady, previously helmed The Hot Chick and The Comebacks. And its team of writers, Swardson and Allen Covert (I’m excluding Adam Sandler here) co-wrote Grandma’s Boy and The Benchwarmers. (Eric Hughes/BOP)
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