| Product: |
Star Magazine |
| Date: |
03/06/07 (179 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: £1 for 146 pages
Disadvantages: Content is poor
Now I’m not much of a magazine reader but having gone away for a few days of rest and relaxation I ended up buying Star magazine to ease the boredom of daytime terrestrial TV. There was admittedly limited selection in the small shop I purchased the magazine from and so I picked what I thought was the best of a bad lot.
Star magazine is a celeb’ filled 146 page weekly mag’ costing £1. Great! A magazine with loads of pages for £1 it’s bound to be great value for money…………..sadly not, read on to find out why.
As with most magazines Star has a regular line up of sections, these are “Breaking news”, “The big picture”, “Celeb's exposed”, “Star fashion”, “Star bodies”, “Star TV” and their extra magazine “Hollywood Star” (which is less of a separate magazine and more of the same old thing but featuring movie stars instead of Brit’ Z listers)
These may sound like great subheadings until you actually read the magazine, for example “Breaking news” features such stories as Jordan/Katie Prices struggle with husband Peter, Chantelle and Preston(off celeb’ Big Brother) denying marriage problems, Michelle and Andy Scott Lee having difficulties….. already the weight of these low listed celebrities should be enough to sum up this magazine and it’s content but wait until you hear about the stories themselves! Each story is given a whole page or in some cases 2 but don’t be fooled, the story takes up less than a 3rd of the space with the rest featuring large unimpressive photos of the so called “Stars” then the story itself is as basic as “it’s difficult because he’s ill and I’m pregnant” or “no we’re not splitting up” when you see a breaking news story which is dedicated 2 pages you expect something deep and spectacular not “no we’re not splitting up” and Jordan being pregnant again is hardly breaking news, as for the Scott Lees…who cares?
There’s almost 30 pages taken up with fashion and beauty and half of their suggestions are quite frankly foul! Can you ladies out there picture yourself in a spangled silver Lycra dress? No, thought not. The horoscopes (because no magazine is complete without them) are full of waffle and brief I’ll tell you mine for the week of 2-8 June
“Kevin Costner has just become a dad for the 5th time. If you’re thinking about
trying for a baby this is the best week to start, but if you’re not be very careful!”
Wow, deep and powerful stuff there hey! Half of it tells me some pointless info about Kevin Costner and the other half is a sex ed’ lesson for morons, if I don’t want a baby I should be careful……no, really! So what will I learn from the predictions? That Kevin has really healthy swimmers!
There isn’t even a really good selection of celebrities in the magazine, it’s the same ones used over and over again. They would have been better off heading the sections as “Jordan” “Brad and Angelina” “Posh and Becks”……you get the idea. There is a small saving grace in that there is a Pirates of The Caribbean article but then considering the 3rd film is out it’s actually no surprise Star has an article on it, just like every other magazine going. Unfortunately this small positive is blown apart by another form of Grace, that of last years Big Brother contestant Grace Adams-Short, this z-list celebrity gets the biggest spread of the 146 pages, a glorious 4 pages, but once again don’t get your hopes up that there might be something vaguely interesting as the questions are mostly along the line of “have you seen Nicky’s new boobs?”
The only good things about this magazine are the TV listings and you can’t really get that wrong, all you have to do is print what’s on that week. They dedicate 2 pages per weekday so there’s quite a lot of the channels listed. Plus while there is some advertising it is spread out well and not all focused at the back with a million premium rate phone lines.
Slightly helpful are the “Reviews” of the latest film and DVD releases giving you a basic description of the film and a verdict accompanied by 1-5 stars depending on how good they thought the film was but every time I find something good I’m then shown something that ruins it all. Just as I tell you about the reviews I spot the page dedicated to pictures of celebrities whose skirts got caught in the wind.
Unfortunately I can’t even think of something positive to say about the writing skills and editing. I’ve spotted words spelt wrong and while the writing style is quite casual, almost like you’re chatting with a friend, you don’t want every article written as if it were gossip, especially not important issues like girls eating disorders/problems.
So you’ve guessed I wasn’t impressed with this one. It has all the promise of a great magazine, the cover lures you in with the promise of big stories, a free Hollywood magazine and of course it’s a good price but once you open the cover and start reading it’s a huge let down. There’s little in the way of new stories here and the ones they do include are barely interesting. The pictures accompanying the stories are badly taken and rarely flattering, the few that are well taken are obviously not by their own photographer. I’ve already mentioned how pointless the horoscopes are and there’s so much fashion included it’s like they’ve put so much in there that they’re bound to get at least one suggestion right. “The big picture” has to be the worst section overall dedicating 2 pages each to a series of celeb's with about 70 words squashed at the bottom left hand corner, David Beckhams 2 pages show him scratching his gentleman’s bits while Amy Winehouse is all about her big hair…..YAWN
I apologize to any Star fans out there but this really is not the magazine for me, I feel like I wasted my pound and can only say I do not recommend this magazine to anyone looking for decent reading! If they reduced this to a two weekly or monthly magazine and improved the quality of the content i'm sure the magazine would be wirth the £1 but not at the moment. Sorry Star!
Summary: Unfortunately a very poor magazine, one to avoid!
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