JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS (2001)

JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS (2001)

Tagline: here kitty, kitty, kitty...

(Comedy, Music, Listening to That Stuff Will Rot Your Brain) [PG-13]

Did you all coordinate before you left the house, or are you just wearing the same thing by accident?

In this one, the band DuJour inadvertently discovers a noise in the background of one of their songs and starts to inquire about it. This is enough for their record label and Wyatt Frame to crash the plane that they are on in order to look for a new band that is so dumb they won’t notice. It doesn’t take long before he discovers three girls in a band and without even hearing their music launches them to stardom almost overnight. Josie and The Pussycats are suddenly the biggest bands in the world, but will they discover the real reason why before they are torn apart? 

First off, this freakin thing was pretty much universally hated by pretty much everyone when it came out. I never saw this in theaters and I clearly wasn’t alone. The movie didn’t even make half of its $39-million-dollar budget at the box office. The film was going for an edgier take on the band made famous by the Archie comics and a Josie and The Pussycats cartoon that ran for 16 episodes between 1970 and 1971. That show was considered a comedy and had a Scooby-Doo-like premise of mystery solving, only with the band doing so while on tour. 

One thing this movie really had going for it was the actual music. The lead vocals were not sung by actress Rachael Leigh Cook (SHE’S ALL THAT). Instead, the vocal duties were handled by the lead singer of Letters to Cleo which makes a lot of sense, because even in my head while watching this, I was thinking “This sounds like Kay Hanley”. The band members did go to a band camp, but apparently mostly learned how to “look” like they were playing the instruments for the movie. Contrast this with HOWARD THE DUCK where the band Cherry Bomb had actresses Lea Thompson performing her own vocals. I actually think Cherry Bomb had better songs, but that isn’t important right now.

The storyline of having subliminal messages in the music isn’t all that far from something that might have happened in the cartoon, but I think perhaps people were turned off by the PG-13 rating and adult topics in the theatrical release and word got out fast, or people just skipped it altogether. I do think most of the humor was actually fine, but then again, I was expecting something more on the level of SHE’S ALL THAT regarding the tone anyway. 

Acting wise I thought Rachael Leigh Cook killed it. I actually liked the overall look of the band in this case. For that matter the entire cast of the TV show “Riverdale” also all looks great also. The problem with that show was that it got too far out there too fast. Then we get to Valerie Brown who was played by Rosario Dawson (SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR) who I really like as an actress. I thought she also did great in the role. Tara Reid (URBAN LEGEND) takes on the role of Melody and also does a solid job. Parker Posey (SCREAM 3) who is kind of hit-and-miss for me plays Fiona, the movie's antagonist. The rest of the cast is fine. 

The film is a brisk 98 minutes long and the music keeps it fun and light, so for me, this was a pretty fun flick that reminded me of the early 90s more than anything else. Somewhere in here we actually get a great message and to be honest, this thing has aged really well and in some cases even feels ahead of its time. 

JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS gets a 5 out of 7. I can see a few changes that might have helped. One of them would be not attempting to humanize the villains in the final sequence, another would have been adding more concert footage. 

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