Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A Masterpiece!

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I can't believe this movie was made in 2001. It seriously has a sense of humor that feels so modern. You can just picture the memes and gifs that would come from this nowadays.Anyways, the plot is absurd, but pretty funny. The music is catchy. The characters are ridiculous and the villains are amazing. Only thing that holds this back from being a perfect movie is Tara Reid. They needed a smart actor to play someone so dumb, but, you know, it's just Tara Reid being Tara Reid..

Someone once asked me why I thought so many rock stars were left-wing, and I cynically replied that, as their target audience consists mostly of the more idealistic members of the younger generation, protesting against greed, acquisitiveness and the materialism of the capitalist system is a great way to make money. Films like this one, a satire directed at the record industry, consumerism and the capitalist system in general, tend to inspire me with a similar cynicism. I am generally suspicious of anti-materialist or anti-capitalist satire emanating from Hollywood, an institution which lives and dies by free-market principles and which is always readier to preach the virtues of thrift, frugality and glad poverty than to practise them. Whenever film-makers rail against Big Business, there is generally a good business reason for them to do so. "Josie and the Pussycats" started life as a strip cartoon published by Archie comics. I can't say that I'm really familiar with it, but I do recall the television cartoon from my childhood in the seventies. It was about an all-female rock band made up of three girls with contrasting hair colours and equally contrasting personalities, Josie (vocalist/guitarist, redhead, sensible and practical), Valerie (tambourine, brunette, headstrong) and  Melody (drums, blonde, sweet- natured but a bit dumb). This film is loosely based upon the comics and the cartoons. The basic idea is that a corrupt record label, MegaRecords, is brainwashing teenagers to buy their records, and many other products as well, by putting subliminal messages under the music. If any of the musicians discover what MegaRecords are up to, they have to be disposed of. In the opening scenes we see Wyatt Frame, a MegaRecords executive, arranging for the members of Du Jour, the label's biggest boy band, to meet their deaths in a plane crash because they have started asking too many awkward questions. This, however, leaves Wyatt with a problem; MegaRecords now need a new group to replace Du Jour. In the small town of Riverdale Wyatt finds a hitherto unsuccessful girl band, the Pussycats, persuades them to accept a lucrative record deal, and propels their first single to the top of the charts. Which leaves just one question. What will happen when the Pussycats discover (and, of course, they invariably will) just what Wyatt and his boss Fiona are up to? Satire, in the cinema or in any other medium, needs something more than just a target to attack. The film never generates a lot of humour, and the characters are all pretty unmemorable. Neither Josie nor Valerie emerges as a well-defined personality. There is some attempt to make Melody a simple-minded airhead like she was in the cartoons, a characterisation owing something to popular prejudices about blondes (and possibly also to pop music's prejudices about drummers). In the cartoon, however, Melody may have been a dumb blonde, but she also had a lovable sweetness about her, something that does not really come over in Tara Reid's interpretation. Reid, in fact, struck me as miscast; she is several years older than her co-stars Rachael Leigh Cook and Rosario Dawson, and I felt that the film would have worked better with a younger Melody, playing her as a naively innocent teenager as opposed to the more worldly twenty-something Josie and Valerie. Several other characters from the cartoon, such as the Pussycats' laid- back upper-class manager Alexander, his obnoxious sister Alexandra and Josie's boyfriend Alan are imported into the film, but they all play minor supporting roles and it is clear that they are only there because fans of the original would have been disappointed had they been omitted. (And whatever happened to Alexandra's cat Sebastian?) Wyatt is a very one-dimensional character, an effete long-haired fop who speaks in the sort of fruity upper-class British accent that the British upper classes largely abandoned several decades ago. Worse, though, than the film's poor characterisation and the low standard of its humour, is its hypocrisy. Two big Hollywood giants like MGM and Universal are not really in a position to start throwing stones at the record industry or anyone else when it comes to accusations of manipulating public opinion or subliminal advertising, especially in these days when film studios and record labels are often part of the same commercial conglomerates. The blatantly obvious product placement with which the film is littered was probably intended as an ironic in- joke, but to my mind it tended to undermine the film's ostensibly anti- consumerist message. I said earlier in this review that protesting against greed, acquisitiveness and the materialism of the capitalist system is a great way to make money. Except in the case of "Josie and the Pussycats" it wasn't. The film actually made a loss at the box office, possibly because its target audience were more aware than the film-makers hoped of the essential contradiction in its position. Or possibly because it's just not a very good film. The moral of the story is not so much "Don't trust what the capitalists tell you" as "Don't trust what anyone in the entertainment business tells you- even when they're telling you not to trust what someone else in the same business tells you!" 4/10

About eight years ago, I watched Josie and the Pussycats on DVD, and gees I thought it was so bad, it deserved a two out of ten. I watched the movie last week on FMC, and I finally got it.The synopsis of the movie, a boy group called Du Jour dies in a plane crash. Alan Cumming's character Wyatt Flemming is sent to a small town to find the next band, where he stumbles across Josie and the Pussy Cats. On the surface the Josie and the Pussy Cats are selling CD's. But, Josie and the Pussycats don't realize that there music label has loaded their songs with subliminal messages; which is used to sell a lifestyle.When I watched the movie last week, I totally got it, as the movie parodied the boy/girl bands of the 1990s. We should not forget that the sound of the groups are (heavily) processed. Everything from the dance moves to facial movements are well choreographed. Also, these bands were in the business of selling the latest fads. Groups such as N*Sync, Backstreet Boys, and Spice Girls were selling an assortment of items such i.e. soft drinks. It is amazing that the movie managed to pick up on the little things that sells a manufactured pop group.My favorite scene of of the movie, when Wyatt Flemming stopped his mini van at the traffic lights, then Josie and the Pussycats walked in front of his car; then they paused. Then Meat Loaf's Paradise by the Dashboard Light cued. Whilst the song was playing, Wyatt removes a CD from its cover: then he frames the girls inside of the cover. Behind Josie and the Pussycats, a sign stated, "World's number 1 Band". Wyatt looks towards the camera mounted on the passenger side and he smiles. All those years ago, I did not realized what I missed on. But lucky for me I caught the movie last week, and I enjoyed it. It parodied the manufactured pop groups of the 1990's. For those people who did not get the film, I would recommend that you watch it in another couple of years, and you may have another perspective on the movie.

To make a comedy, is a good way to entertain. But when you put something serious into the comic mix while remaining entertaining, so that's close to perfect.Despite the goofy looks of this movie, the fact that there were no big stars to support it, and even its reputation as a financial flop; it's a very good movie indeed. The comedy was fine, and the performance (including, believe it or not, Tara Reid) was wonderful ! The final hurly-burly wasn't a real hurly-burly as it should be, but it managed to be all good. The most important thing of it was its message about the modern pop culture. That will make it live longer than any shallow teen comedy. And it was totally conspicuous for me to find out that not one but three works aimed at the same issue, in the same time, by almost the same viewpoint !On 25 February 2001 an episode of (The Simpsons) titled (New Kids on the Blecch) was aired, involved Bart and his friends joining a boy band. While watching a video for the Party Posse, Lisa notices the phrase "Yvan Eht Nioj" being repeated continuously by belly-dancers. She plays the video in reverse and finds that it means "Join the Navy". Also, an Uncle Sam "I Want You" poster can be seen in the video frame by frame. The joke was that the United States sends subliminal messages in order to recruit people!Strangely, or not, at the same year, right on 11 April 2001, we got (Josie and the Pussycats), where large secret organization advertises anything some businessmen produce by inserting subliminal messages through low tracks mixed in underneath other louder tracks in innocent girl band's songs to influence the listeners' actions, mainly the teenagers, to just consume very trivial goods. It confirmed so comically that the modern pop culture aims at making us stupid petty creatures with no consciousness and no thinking at all (I loved the way how anyone starts to think has to be kidnapped immediately as the peak of the movie's hilarious paranoia). On 29 June 2001 (Pootie Tang) was released to nearly say the same, but through a spoof of a superstar. Aside from his imbecile mentality and idiot songs, his sexual charisma brings him all : money, fame and companies that want to exploit that to the utmost. As you see, the star became a commodity more than an artist. So it's wholly a game of marketing, not art anymore.Thus, art or media became only a way to affect meanly, or accurately a "cat's-paw" that big parties (the government, the huge corporations, whatever..) manipulate capably to control the ever surrendering recipient, to plunder their consciousness, so their freedom, transforming the whole process into mass hypnosis or ultimate scheme. It's all the way about the blind acceptation, the absence of thinking (or the critical mind) and the insistence of the pop culture to be nothing but dull, trite and vapid.It's great that in simple comedies you find satirical messages as important as this. It is how the pop recovers itself and comes to its senses. And when 3 works in one year say the same, I won't think that their makers turned all into conspiracy theory's freaks ! But rather the term "No smoke without fire" will come to mind, or maybe the word "believable".