Over-enthusiastic fan Richard Orchid (Holmes Osborne) is making a documentary on the rise, fall and attempted comeback of former 1980's and 1990's action hero movie star Frank Sledge (Richard Leitch), and Sledge is happy to go along with the making of Orchid's movie. As a child Francis Allen Sledgewick was dumped at a dance studio by his parents in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The head of that studio Samantha Jones (Lin Shaye) takes him as a student, and he proves to be somewhat of a prodigy. So after high school, he leaves home and seeks fame in Hollywood. While he's struggling with that, he gained some notoriety as a Chippendale's dancer thanks to the help of the just gay enough manager Glen Jefferies (Nathan Lee Graham). It was that club that turned him into the main attraction and where he also gets the attention of movie producer Russell Gold (Chris Palermo), who wants to replace the former star of "Bloodfight" for a sequel with none other than him. The studio decided to change his name to Frank Sledge. Do you think it's far-fetched to have a dancer use those moves in on-screen martial arts scenes? You shouldn't. Olivia Holt's dancing skills got her that major starring role in Disney XD's "Kickin' It." Anyway, the producers work around all the inconsistencies, and the movie is a big success, and Frank becomes a big star overnight.On the set of a spoof of "Above the Law," Frank is injured during the fight scene, and the actor he was supposed to be fighting with convinces him that because he's the star, he should get everything his way, and he takes that advice way too seriously as noted by Eric Roberts who played his character's police chief. It's at this point he starts to become both an ego-maniac on the set and a junkie. Everyone is pissed off by his antics, especially female co-stars like Sean Young, Angelina Jolie, Kelly Hu, etcetera. On the set of "Jimbo," he gets so wasted that they have to rewrite another actor's character as having multiple personality disorder so they can use Frank's lines. It's all downhill from there for the big star, and the only thing left to live for now are acting lectures, pizza delivery jobs, and AA meetings lead by ex-comedian Richard Lewis. I was interested in 18 Fingers of Death because of two people; the hilarious Lori Beth Denberg, and the late Pat Morita. It wasn't worth it. In this case, I was interested because of Kali Rocha, who has a minor part as a receptionist for a talent agency trying to help restart Frank's career. I say "trying" loosely, because the agent (played by Sam McMurray) doesn't seem to be doing that much to get him any decent roles, and Sledge himself sucks now. Either way, Rocha's character has a crush on him, and her boss teases her over it. Frank is all business though, and he takes a pay-scale gig in a movie that will eventually be rewritten completely as the first of the "Rush Hour" series... without him or his female lead. The soundtrack is dominated by a bad retooling of Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger," known as "Dance With the Dragon." It's supposed to be bad, but you don't care that much, because Leitch (who sings the song), tries to make it a little funnier. So groan if you must at the bad puns of existing movie titles. Or Ernie Hudson's attempts to combine one of his lines from "Ghostbusters" with Richard Crenna's speech about how hard it is to kill John Rambo from "First Blood." Or even (God forbid), the musical version of "The Matrix," with Debbie Allen replacing Laurence Fishburne III. This isn't in the same league as "Take the Money and Run," but it's still amusing enough. One important note; A tagline for this movie was that "America Needed a Hero." At the time this movie focused on the start of Sledge's acting career, America already had Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood, and Charles Bronson, and had already failed miserably to turn Barry Bostwick into an action hero. So there were plenty of action movie heroes that existed before the mid-1980s.

CONFESSIONS OF AN ACTION STAR is one of those tiresome 'mockumentaries' that seems to think it's a lot funnier than it actually is. It's about a cheesy B-movie action hero and stripper attempting to make a comeback. The running time is made up of mock interviews with friends, fans, and colleagues and there are fake movie clips and the like. The comedy is lowbrow and scattershot but somehow they've managed to get cameos from certain celebrities like Kelly Hu and Ernie Hudson. A MATRIX spoof is probably the low point here.

I don't normally go for martial arts comedies, and usually the words "action mockumentary" fill me with dread, but I nevertheless took a chance with this one and was pleasantly surprised. CONFESSIONS OF AN ACTION STAR appears to be a passion project for stunt expert David Leitch that presents a humorous take on action filmmaking and the celebrity action hero. It's not nearly perfect, falling on its creative butt more than once, but it's still much better than it has any right to be.The story: Frank Sledge - a Chippendale's dancer who became a Hollywood action star - attempts to recreate himself after hitting rock bottom, in faux documentary form.The Frank Sledge character is largely a caricature of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, and - to a lesser extent - Sylvester Stallone. The experienced action film-goer can entertain himself by simply matching the quirks and features of the character to the aforementioned figures: he creates a stage name because his real one is too long, beats up stuntmen during fight scenes, has a ponytail, does drugs and abuses steroids, eats a lot, etc. Scenes and posters of fictional movies blatantly spoof existing titles such as ABOVE THE LAW and RAMBO. While I get a kick out of how thoroughly these gags are carried, they present two potential audience detractions to viewers not naturally inclined to like the movie: fans who idolize Van Damme and/or Seagal may not find the spoofs humorous, and viewers who watch the movie to see some solid potshots may be disappointed that it's not nearly as mean as it could be.Not all of the humor is successful, even for me. The first half of the film is definitely funnier than the second, and a handful of individual jokes - including one about Angelina Jolie's children - fall flat. Speaking of Jolie, the list of celebrity cameo appearances is sort of astounding: Carrie-Ann Moss, Ernie Hudson, Eric Roberts, Sean Young, Hugo Weaving, and Ben Stiller are on the incomplete list. Names better known to martial arts devotees include Kelly Hu, Daniel Bernhardt, Matt McColm, Gerald Okamura, Philip Tan, Al Leong... Cameos on their own aren't funny, of course, but about half of the time they're played to decent effect, like Moss' comments on being a serious actress. Steven Roy plays Brett Radner in some scenes revealing that Frank Sledge was originally supposed to star in RUSH HOUR.Despite technically qualifying as an action-comedy, none of the action is what you would call satisfying, though the MATRIX-inspired dance scene is cooler than you might expect. The "documentary" effect is pretty heavy-handed and not played even slightly believably, but in the end this doesn't hurt the movie. Were some of the humor played just a bit more subtle, and had the movie more clearly played either a spoof or an original story, this one's rating would have another star attached to it. Nevertheless, these are a pretty enthusiastic three stars, meaning that the film is definitely worth checking out on television or picking up for $3 from a bargain bin.

This mockumentary chronicles the rise, fall, and subsequent rise again of Frank Sledge (David Leitch) Poking fun at action clichés and films such as the ones in the films of Steven Seagal & '80's era Sylvester Stallone, (with a musical-styled Matrix riff near the end) this film is a longer, feature-length version of "Sledge" (a 30 minute short which is also available on the DVD of this film) In ways the short film is a bit better than the movie, as the short is more streamlined where as this seems padded a bit. There are some smiles to be had (mind you I said smiles and not belly laughs for a reason), but it just feels too long and the plot just can't support the length of the film, as such I can't really recommend this film, but I didn't really loathe it either. After a while I found myself playing 'spot the celebrity cameo' more then paying real attention to the plot though.My Grade: C- DVD Extras: Commentary by Director Brad Martin & writer/actor David Leitch; Short film: 'Sledge'; a Making-of Sledge; production slide show; theatrical trailer for this film; and Trailers for "Suspense" & "the Orange Thief"