Under the radar of most people -- not including New Beverly Cinema programmer Phil Blankenship, who brought this film to my attention when he booked it as a midnight movie a few months ago -- Standing Ovation (now available at Amazon.com) snuck in and out of theaters this summer. But this shrieky kids' tuner isn't merely a would-be High School Musical; it's the kind of delicious disaster you were hoping Burlesque was going to be.
The plot deals with rival groups of pre-teen girls vying to win a big televised singing competition -- the better for the movie to wedge in 20, that's two-zero, songs, all ear-punishing -- but trying to follow the storyline is a fool's errand. Better to sit back and try to figure out who thought this was a good idea, why that one girl always has poisonous lizards in her purse, and how much of a sense of humor the choreographer must have had.
Standing Ovation is one of those movies that feeds the "everyone is a star/believe in your dreams/you can have anything if you want it enough" psychosis that makes the American Idol auditions so cruelly delightful to watch, and it feature a gaggle of performances that will no doubt embarrass its cast once they reach adulthood. But it never lags, and it's never not loony, and that's certainly more than you can say for that Christina Aguilera movie that's currently playing to half-filled theaters.
If you walked out of Burlesque still hungry for a wrong-headed, over-produced musical that's unintentionally funny from start to finish, Standing Ovation is the movie for you.