30 Days Until I’m Famous

30 Days Until I’m Famous casts Sean Patrick Flanery as Cole Thompson, a slick music executive who makes a bet with his boss (Udo Kier’s Barry Davis) that he can transform just about anybody into a successful pop singer – with the wager set into motion after Barry selects a mouthy, rough-around-the-edges delivery girl (Camille Guaty’s Maggie Moreno) for the challenge. Cole subsequently sets out to teach his reluctant pupil how to walk, talk, and dance like a pop star, with the pair’s efforts building to an important music competition that will pit Maggie against Alanna Ubach’s fearsome Daisy Fresh. Director Gabriela Tagliavini has infused 30 Days Until I’m Famous with a pleasant, consistently peppy sensibility that proves instrumental at initially compensating for the hackneyed setup, with the relatively affable atmosphere heightened by the stellar work from both Flanery and Moreno. It’s only as the movie marches into its surprisingly sluggish midsection that boredom starts to set in, as scripter Laura Angelica Simon places an almost oppressive emphasis on the protagonists’ ongoing efforts at preparing for the big show (ie the movie effectively devolves into a series of training sequences and montages). By the time the fake break-up phase, which is tedious even by the standards of this notoriously needless plot device, rolls around, 30 Days Until I’m Famous has firmly established itself as a sporadically passable yet hopelessly underwhelming piece of work that’s unlikely to pass muster with even the most easygoing of romcom fans.

*1/2 out of ****