Josie and the Pussycats (2001)

A Worthy Enemy, But Are The Pussycats Up to the Task?

Josie and the Pussycats are saving the world once more, and this time the enemy is no less than the juggernaut that is brainless and trendy pop-culture consumerism. The movie is a light-spirited and silly satire. In that sense, the romp it presents is fun and the subject of its lampooning is worthy to tackle. However, it is played too straight and goofy, missing an edge that otherwise could have allowed it to hit its mark just right.

The film's opening sequence is a brilliant set-up, using a cynical humor and timing that the rest of the movie didn't match. Screaming fans await the arrival of their favorite pop sensation: a boy band called "Dujour." They entertain the crowd on a runway in their comical outfits, with their non-sensical gestures, and their cheesy song. They fly away from the crowd in their private plane, plastered from head to tail in nothing but the logos of the Target department store chain. Inside, the members of the band bicker about whose faces are on Coca-Cola cans, who originated what signature poses, and other petty concerns, while their manager Wyatt Frame (Alan Cumming) tries to keep the peace. It's hilarious. In one simple opening scene, the empty commercialism of this branch of pop phenomena is speared right between the eyes.

For reasons to be made clear later, Wyatt and the pilot parachute from the plane, leaving "Dujour" to its fate. Wyatt ends up in Riverdale, home of the struggling girl rock band known as The Pussycats: singer/guitarist Josie (Rachael Leigh Cook), bassist Valerie (Rosario Dawson), and drummer Melody (Tara Reid). They play thankless gigs at bowling alleys and don't seemed destined for stardom anytime soon. However, fortune strikes when Wyatt, under orders from a secret boss to find a new band to promote, nearly runs The Pussycats over. Soon, just based on their image and their aspirations of being a famous band, Wyatt signs them on to his label, Mega Records, without so much as hearing a note from their songs. The girls are confused but excited about their good fortune, and are soon flying on their way to the headquarters of Mega Records to record their first single.

It is upon their arrival that we, the audience, learn that Mega Records CEO Fiona (Parker Posey) is aiding the government in the effort to brainwash America's youth into becoming mindless fad-followers. With a technique pulled right out of "Pinky and the Brain," low-volume subliminal messages are played in the backgrounds of pop singles, commanding the listeners to follow such trends as buying Big Macs and Reeboks, adoring the hottest new movie star, and regarding orange to be the new "in" color. It seems to be working great; the city where the record company is located is flooded by the logos of commercial corporations. It looks like a huge outlet mall exploded and its remains landed all over the buildings. Teenagers buy anything and everything deemed as cool or the next big thing. And Josie and the Pussycats are going to be the new unwitting perpetrators of fad madness. Will the band find out what's going on and be able to stop the villains before it's too late?

So it's a cartoon plot for a movie based on a comic book. It's fitting, and the subject of the satire is timely. Unfortunately, directors Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan don't seem to be able to make it run as smoothly and sharply as it could have. Part of this problem comes from the presentation of our protagonists themselves. Josie, Valerie, and Melody are just sort of lead around from one situation to another, mostly oblivious to what's going on. In the personality department, they don't have much to offer: Josie is the normal girl, and Valerie, while at first somewhat jealous of Josie's being promoted as the front woman, is also more or less a normal girl. Melody is, as she was in the cartoon, a good-natured airhead and is a funny character, but she ultimately ends up being a one-note joke. The movie is less about them than it is about the satire as a whole. If the characters were written a little more strongly and were perhaps a little more active in the effort to deflate the monster that is pop-culture, the movie would have gained some strength.

Ultimately, the movie settles for a very silly third act that tries to deliver the moral of the movie using easy and obvious humor that, while fun to mindlessly laugh at, fails to deliver the final punch that it needs. It's as if the makers of the movie gave up trying to make clever references to the way youth society is so easily dominated by what the entertainment industry sells to them, and just decided to spell it out for the audience loud and clear. That's too bad. I think they had something going here as far as having a great premise was concerned, and they didn't have either the creativity or the wickedness in them to present a really effective statement. They also obviously had to avoid directly condemning any of the corporations themselves (the "real" evil, after all, is in the subliminal messages) who were oh-so-kind enough to place their products and logos all over the movie. The result is potential squandered and a lot of, well, pussy-footing around (sorry about that pun).

I conclude by decrying the marketing of this movie. It was apparently heavily promoted on MTV (it does feature Carson Daly and "Total Request Live" in the movie) and that has apparently drawn a large teenage audience. However, neither the TV spots nor the treater trailer give any clue that the movie is going to attack the very culture and audience mentality that MTV thrives on. Josie and the Pussycats is selling itself to teeny-boppers, and then presents to them a movie in which they are portrayed as easily manipulated and materialistic. Will its intended audience get the message? It is my belief that those who have the cynicism to appreciate it will not appreciate having the message force-fed to them in the end, while the rest who haven't developed that cynicism will miss the point entirely. And very little of them will even be able to identify the characters from the Archie comics they originated from (there's even one joke in there that specifically references that), so even that novelty is wasted. Josie and the Pussycats has good intentions, but unfortunately doesn't have what it takes to effectively carry them out.

Rating: 5/10

©Jeffrey Chen, Apr. 12, 2001

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