Tagline: “When you look like Megan Valentine, the world is your cupcake … but everyone wants a piece of your pie!”
Translation: You know, her pie. Get it? It’s sexual.
The Verdict: Major Movie Star may be the ultimate Jessica Simpson project. In the film, she plays a bankrupt movie star who — through machinations too stupid to explain in the trailer — joins the military. She gets to play “hot” and “dumb” and “spoiled” and “proud American” all at once, in a film that seems dim and amateurish even by the standards of Disney Channel TV movies. Though the trailer seems to nudge at a sort of self-awareness in the way it mocks her shallow rich-girl persona, the actual meta commentary on Simpson’s celebrity comes through in the way every character in the trailer either treats her as a product, berates her for being dumb and lazy, or ogles her Barbie-doll body. It’d be really, really smart if only it weren’t so depressingly stupid! Also, Steve Guttenberg is in this thing? Is this what it’s come to, Steve? —Matthew Perpetua