Virtually every Saturday Night Live sketch rip-off flick ever made has blown like the mighty North wind. Even the arguably “good” ones like “Wayne’s World” have been nothing to write home about unless you were going to tell you mom to wait for the video.

They are usually only mildly entertaining, and while there a few laughs, the concept behind them is usually so weak there is nothing to hold one’s interest for the standard 80 minutes they normally last.

“Superstar” is no exception to this hard and fast rule.

Take one Mary Katherine Gallagher sketch and try to stretch the thin, two-dimensional character out over the period of a theatrical release, and you end up with something so thin and flimsy you can read the bad reviews through it.

Gallagher has more depth than the average SNL character but not by much. She has a dream about becoming a superstar.

Well, we learned all of that by reading the movie poster.

How about giving us something more to chew on that doesn’t choke us with its syrupy sweet “losers have dreams, too” schlock.

This whole genre springs from the only halfway decent movies to come out of the whole Lampoon/SNL school of thought: “Caddyshack,” “Meatballs,” “Stripes,” “Animal House” and “Vacation.”

This kind of thing flew in the late ’70s and early ’80s, but since then, the snobs versus the slobs mentality just doesn’t work as well.

People get haircuts now. Drugs are more hard-core. And rooting for losers peaked with “Revenge of the Nerds.”

Gallagher is a quiet, geeky girl who wants nothing more than to be a superstar.

She thinks if she can catch her big break, she will get a “magic moment” kiss from a cute boy she has been dreaming about forever.

Tired of being the rewind girl at the local video store where she obsessively memorizes monologues from old movies, she decides to try out for her school’s talent show.

After a vicious fight with Evian, the school hottie and girlfriend of Gallagher’s love-interest, Sky, played by Will Ferrell, she gets her wish.

Fast forward, surprise, surprise, she ends up winning with the help of her grandmother who reluctantly agrees after mindlessly objecting for most of the movie even though she herself was in show business years ago.

Will Ferrell may well be the best part of the movie. He shows up regularly to provide inspiration and comic relief in a comedy which needs it — bad.

Harland Williams (“Rocket Man,” “Wag the Dog”) is a bright spot surprisingly enough. Though this comedian has a way with words, he was cast as a nearly mute, motorcycle-riding bad boy who carries a torch for Gallagher since she nearly drowned him as a child.

He hangs in the background making Gallagher nervous as he overlooks her many eccentricities like tree-kissing and stop sign-groping.

As bad as this movie is, it is good for a few cheap laughs if you are in the mood for just under 90 minutes of the same damn thing over and over again.

TWO STARS

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs