STAGE-MOMMIE DEAREST

BY BELINDA M. PASCHAL

If you’ve ever wondered what ingredients go into creating a Lindsay Lohan or a Britney Spears, check out VH1’s “I Know My Kid’s A Star,” a weekly debacle that’s part talent search, part reality show and full-fledged televised child abuse.

Hosted by ex-“Partridge Family” kid Danny Bonaduce, the series gives 10 pre-teens and their parents the chance to see if they’ve got the right stuff to make it as a child star without becoming regular guests at Hotel Rehab. Each week, a parent-child team is deemed unready for Hollywood and sent home.

To many familiar with his sordid history, Bonaduce mentoring child stars might seem as incongruous as Paris Hilton performing brain surgery, but he actually offers valuable critiques and his own experiences give credence to the cautionary tales he shares.

The show operates under the guise of discovering America’s next “It” boy or girl, but clearly, it’s all about which stage mom can be the biggest, er, witch – a noun I’m tactfully employing in lieu of a more apropos rhyming word that starts with “b.”

Several of the mothers are already savvy at the showbiz game. There’s the B-movie actress who looks like a Whitesnake groupie capable of snorting a pint of Jack Daniels then eating the bottle. Everyone knows someone like her: brash, funny, occasionally crude – a blast at parties, but after 15 minutes, you’re gasping for the air she’s sucked out of the room. Though she means well, her big personality and bigger need for attention eclipses her kid’s limelight. It’s very telling that her daughter, a gorgeous Eliza Dushku in miniature, performs well only when Mom exits stage left.

There’s the ex-Broadway dancer who’d put any pimp to shame as she tries to sell Bonaduce and talent agent Marki Costello on her daughter’s talent – of which we rarely see a glimmer because the child’s always petrified after Mom’s cringe-worthy browbeatings. This poor kid makes Pavlov’s dogs look like free thinkers.

There’s the acting teacher mom, levelheaded and likeable, whose kid is not only a charmer, but hands-down the most talented of the bunch. Naturally, most of the other moms hate her; when they say, “Break a leg,” they mean it literally.

Some of the parents are newbies to the vicious shredding machine that is Hollywood, like the recently eliminated sweetheart of a mom – one of the few “normal” (translation: sane) ones – who agreed with Bonaduce that her meek, polite demeanor would probably hinder her daughter’s career.

Putting this volatile mix of personalities in one big house is clearly a ratings ploy; there’s far more high drama among the moms than onstage where the kids are auditioning. Watching some of these women interact with their kids is more excruciating than slowly peeling off a week-old scab:

“If we get sent home, you’d better not cry!”

“It’s not ‘Romper Room.’ We’re not here to friggin’ play.”

"I’m a single mom. You have to get rich and famous so you can buy me that dream house!”

Blecch … perhaps a better name for the show would be “I Know My Kid’s A Future Tabloid Cover.”