Demi Lovato: Child Star

Famous childstars on average die 14 years earlier and they have a 4 times increased chance of dying by suicide. Those are the grim statistics behind this documentary which gives a detailed insight into the Disney childstar Demi Lovato... whom I have never heard of but apparently she was HUGELY popular.

We mostly get to see demi lovato talk to other childstars (Drew Barrymore and Christina Ricci for instance) and the recurring theme is that almost all of them suffered from their huge fame and started to use drugs and alchohol to cope with a life they had no real control over.

These childstars are being squeezed out for every penny they can make and the more popular they become the more a product they become up to a point that certain childstars became wall street products which could be sold and bought at the stock exchange! Currently the childstar content is valued at over 500 billion dollars.

Incredible to see how these kids are being treated. Money, money and more money is the culprit behind this behaviour towards these kids whose only dream is to become famous, but adults wanna make money of their fame. The way in which money overrules the healthy development of childstars' lives is what this documentary is all about.

This documentary starts out unassuming and without the bleak and grim statistics, but have some patience and please watch it till the end, because then you get to see the real damage done to this famous childstars...

I put this on in the background while I was doing some work...I soon realized I'd stopped working and was just watching. I've not followed Demi Levoto's career, and only know what I know about her through the media. Hearing her story told like that was eye-opening and gave me a new respect for her and what she's been through.

I would have liked to hear more from the other child stars, however I did feel that what they contributed was valuable in painting a fairly clear picture of the impacts of the industry. It also would have been nice to dig a little deeper into child stars of the past as well, however I did appreciate that it included insight people from multiple roles in and around the industry.

Definitely worth a watch!

Some directors like to make themselves a part of the project, much to the detriment of the project. Nas is guilty of making himself part of docs he directs. Demi Lovato apparently does the same. This is a movie about her experience with child stardom, with some comments from other people who experienced similar. That being said, nothing was new in the doc, just rehashed information she previously included in other projects, with one exception: most states, Florida included, don't have Coogan Laws to protect the income of children; similarly, there seem to be zero (or one with Washington State) that protect child internet performers' incomes. Otherwise, the doc is a massive waste of time.

Coming into it you expect to hear inside stories and raw emotions from former child stars. Unfortunately you get one child stars story and slightly cooked emotions with the same old stories that we have heard before form Demi. I feel like I barely know the other child stars featured in this documentary, which for something that claimed to show what child stardom is really like and how it affects people later on in life, it doesn't really feel like I got any of that. Christina Ricci, Drew Barrymore, Kenan Thompson, Raven Symone are all amazing actors and whom I wish I got more in depth interviews from. We know Demi's story. Let's hear from some other people. I also didn't learn much of past child stars like Judy Garland or Shirley Temple. The documentary tried to cover over 100 years of child stardom by including current child star JoJo Siwa and the current fascination of YouTube Kids. I didn't really get the meaning or theme behind this documentary. Needed more refinement and a better vision statement.

"Child Star" is a documentary featuring Demi Lovato. It ostensibly is about the damage that occurs to child stars...on TV, in movies and on the internet. However, at times it seems more about Lovato in particular and a few of her friends and not the broader topic of child exploitation.

If you are looking for an exposee which shows the damage done to child actors by their parents and movie/TV studios, you can do MUCH better than this one. While the documentary talks about SOME of the issues concerning the exploitation of kids in the media, it also seems like it's very careful to excuse the studios and parents. Well, if they aren't to blame for the exploitation....why is?? And, it doesn't surprise me that the film is distributed by Disney...a corporation with a VERY bad history of child stars who run off the rails.

The film also seems to be leaving out a LOT in regard to Lovato. While it talks about her recent projects and SOME of her difficulties, it all feels very sanitized and leaves out some very important questions...such as about her parents' involvement in creating some of these problems. The father is never mentioned and her mother is pretty much given a pass. Overall, a mildly interesting film but one that manages to miss the mark.