Review for Global-Indian section of India.com
Lilly Singh, better known as “Superwoman,” is taking her self-made stardom to new heights with “A Trip to Unicorn Island”—a documentary that gives viewers a first-class seat on the YouTube sensation’s world tour.
Sitting down to watch the film, now available for purchase on YouTube Red, I expected to see snapshots of Singh traveling the globe, telling jokes, and posing with her signature “S” hand sign. Instead, what I got was a less than glamorous look at what it really takes for her to be a “Superwoman.”
The documentary starts with Singh, clad in her glittery blue pilot’s costume, getting amped up to go on stage in front yet another screaming crowd. In the voiceover, she says she will never stop pushing to succeed at what she does. To her, being “Superwoman” isn’t about telling jokes, doing skits, vlogging, rapping, or performing; it’s making people happy.
While her goal is to spread smiles to her audience, we learn through the documentary that her YouTube empire was started through a need to find her own happiness. Singh shares that after graduating from university, she struggled with depression and in her attempt to find a way out of the darkness, she began creating videos in 2010.
The title of the documentary comes from one of Singh’s earlier videos where she describes “Unicorn Island” as her “happy place” full of everything from popcorn to technicolor plush toys. “I truly believe that everyone has a unicorn island within them,” Singh says in the film, adding that through her tour, she wanted to remind people that life is beautiful and help take them to that place of happiness—a message that seems to be both for her audience as for herself.
Ishani Nath 