Movie Title: Josie and the Pussycats

Movie Title: Josie and the Pussycats
Rating: 6
Reviewed By: Michael Stevens

Review:
Who's yo daddy? Oops, my bad, wrong kinda pussycat. Let's start over. This movie is about a trio called The Pussycats (no I didn't leave off the Josie part) who want to make it big. Well just their luck, a record exec drops into Riverdale and signs them on the spot without even listening to their music. Sound suspicious, doesn't it? But wait, there's more! The record executive Wyatt (Alan Cumming) also just got rid of his previous mega-group De Jour after they caught onto something. De Jour would be a mockery of the boy bands out there and even had a rather disturbing hit called "Backdoor Love," which is the kinda lovin I think a lot of those boy bands enjoy, but rather racy for movie targeted towards teens. Anyway, The Pussycats make it big and head for New York to make songs, videos and hold a concert all in a week. Wyatt also changes their name to Josie and the Pussycats, which Josie (Rachel Leigh Cook) doesn't mind too much but the other two, Melody (Tara Reid) and Val (Rosario Dawson) are a little peeved. They also run into the record company head Fiona (Parker Posey) who we learn is brainwashing kids with music. All the while the audience is hit with a barrage of marketing from Target, Motorola, Coke, and more to try and show the over commercialization of the music industry, and frankly teenagers lives in general. I think they may have been trying a little bit of reverse psychology with it too. Of course the movie is based on the cartoon and comic strip, and as such they also have the Cabots, Alexander (Paulo Costanzo) and Alexandra (Missi Pyle). The film also has second storyline of Alan M. (Gabriel Mann) as the man/boy of Josie's dreams. Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan direct the Pussycats through their journey from nobodies to big rock stars, from best friends to falling apart, from school girls to crack whores (ok, that didn't actually happen) but it might have in real life. Others in the cast include Seth Green, Tom Butler, Alexander Martin, Breckin Meyer, and cameos by MTV personalities Carson Daly and the sexy Serena Altschul. The great thing about Josie and the Pussycats is that it never took itself seriously. It was willing to poke fun at itself at the music industry. Now some of that was just plain stupid or lame, some of it worked. The characters were great, I especially liked the airhead blonde character of Melody (on more than one level). Now the plot itself was rather lame and there was pretty much zero character development, but what can one expect from a teenagers film? In the end I give Josie and the Pussycats six couches out of ten. That's it for this About-Movies.com review, see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya.