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List Price: $9.99 | | Label: Universal Studios
Salesrank: 76476
Released: November 20, 2001 |
| Our Price: $1.21 |
| Used Price: $0.10 |
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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
THE HIGH ENERGY STORY ABOUT THREE NEWLY DISCOVERED SMALL-TOWN MUSICIANS WHO GET TANGLED UP IN AN EVIL PLOT TO CONTROL THE YOUTH OF AMERICA. A PSYCHOTIC STUDIO EXECUTIVE IS MANIPULATINGTHE LUCRATIVE TEEN MARKET BY MIXING SUBLIMINAL ADVERTISINGMESSAGES INTO THE MUSIC OF HER BANDS.
Description of Josie and the Pussycats (PG Version):
"Oh my God, I'm a trend pimp!" cries rocker Josie McCoy (Rachel Leigh Cook) when she discovers that she and her best friends Melody (Tara Reid) and Val (Rosario Dawson)--collectively known as the Pussycats--have been recruited in a plot to brainwash America's youth into a frenzy of mindless consumerism. Unbeknownst to the Pussycats, subliminal messages in their chart-topping hit "Pretend to Be Nice" are forcing kids to follow the latest prefab trends as if their lives depended on it. Josie's going to be the Next Big Thing, and to her manager (Alan Cumming) and Megarecords mogul Fiona (Parker Posey), the other Pussycats are expendable baggage in their scheme to dictate the cool quotient of teenagers everywhere.
Shrewdly concocted by codirectors Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, this wildly comedic update of the Archie comic book (and early-'70s cartoon show) is a deliriously entertaining assault on pop-cultural flotsam, with a disposable boy-band (aptly named "Du Jour") and cross-product marketing ploys that perpetuate blind conformity among gullible teens. Blatant product placements dominate virtually every colorful scene as Josie gamely embraces the cultural blight it claims to criticize, but this isn't Hollywood hypocrisy. Elfont and Kaplan willfully bite the hand that feeds them, and they're having loads of fun while advocating independent opinion. Cook and her pals are more honestly sexy than Britney Spears, and they make genuinely catchy music (although Cook's vocals were dubbed). It's pure fluff, but Josie and the Pussycats was conceived in such high spirits that it's hard to imagine how it could be improved. Even the obligatory end-credit outtakes are utterly irresistible. --Jeff Shannon
Josie and the Pussycats (PG Version) Reviews:
Mc Donalds, Target & Pepsi want you to watch this movie...DON'T DO IT! 
2009-07-30 - This is not the nimble, intellectual satire that the movie makers, and reviewers on Amazon, would like you to think it is. Beyond that, it is insulting, and may actually be a vehicle for the very product placement/power-of-suggestion marketing technique it claims to be skewering.
The movie doesn't really know what it wants to be, and it manages to NOT be any of the movies it's trying to be: It's NOT a teen flick, it's NOT a comic book adaptation, it's NOT a clever social satire, it's NOT a comedy, biting or otherwise.
One of the biggest issues I have with the movie is the product placement and subliminal messaging. If they really meant it to be seen as a comment on rampant commercialism, why didn't the movie makers use fake brands? Instead, the well-known brands and logos crammed into every corner of every frame in the film turn it into the commercial it claims to be railing against. Another reviewer felt this was downright deceptive, and I am inclined to agree.
Aside from the product placement issue, the movie has no character development ( I KNOW they are cartoon characters, but even as cartoons they have some personality). The acting is, uh, limited: Rachel Leigh Cook mostly just expresses dull surprise, Rosario Dawson is given almost nothing to do, and Tara Reid can't even do ditzy with any conviction. Posey Parker and Alan Cummings are reasonably good, but with this script they've got to work awfully hard, and their characters still end up being flat, one-dimensional stereotypes. The plot could have been entertaining, in a goofy, cartoon way, but instead it just kind of lays there, waiting for someone to pick it up and run with it.
And why was it necessary to toss in a bunch of juvenile, vulgar "humor"? Again, just insulting.
Originally, I was hoping to find a fun, cute, light romp with Josie and the Pussycats. After reading comments from reviewers who not only liked it, but also indicated that it had some real depth, and a message to impart, I bought it thinking that it would be surprisingly meaty and meaningful. In the end, I got neither, and this DVD now resides in the garbage.
"Josie and the Pussycats is the best movie EVER" 
2009-06-21 - No, it's not, but that is a line in the movie and it is about subliminal messages, so I can't help but describe the movie that way. :) It's really quite funny and a lot of fun to watch. The best scene is the ditsy Mel in the shower - you just gotta love her! Worth your time, you'll get some good laughs out of this one.
Wen the adaptations of comics are well made
2009-01-13 - Wen the adaptations of comics are well made, this is wath you got, the cartoon was funy, the comics were funy this movie is not lees, the movie have menssage and all, is fun in a lot of ways, i recomended... the favorite movie of Red Richards
Great movie for a Sociology class 
2008-06-28 - One of my students recommended this movie for my "Advertising and Society" sociology class. I cannot personally identify with this movie, I would not watch it just to watch a movie, but to explain concepts, and theories, and critiques, and paradigms for the advertising class, this is really perfect. The constant, in-your-face display of brand names is phenomenal. Students will identify, after a few minutes, all the "hidden" ads contained in our environments; they have a great time with the teenies who decide that one color is out, and the other is in. When watched in conjunction with a good textbook (such as Twitchell's ADCULT USA), it is blatantly apparent that indeed, advertising is culture, and culture is advertising. What a great movie to show for this class. I highly recommend it.
SocProf
(3.5): A Zoolander for Young Girls (and Boys...) 
2008-06-24 - I'm not sure whether this movie came out before or after Zoolander, but it certainly shares many things in common. You have your Derek Zoolander type character(s) embodied in Josie and the Pussycats themselves, who were discovered out of nowhere by a music agent who needed a new band to act as a front for the music industry and its use of subliminal messages to get young people to consume products and buy into every fad alive. It really is a good set-up and one that is a great modern reinterpretation of the original Archie Comic (I would have loved to have a cameo of Archie and his friends). The movie follows a one week or so change of fortunes for Josie and their friends as they go from playing at a bowling alley where they are each paid $5 to be ignored by old men bowling strikes to being number one on Billboard. All the while, they are being used to make money. Of course, we have the classic fight between band members and ultimate redemption followed by the chance to play for real, without the subliminal messaging in front of thousands of people. And of course, sprinkle in some love and a moral or two. It all adds up to a relatively entertaining movie from the decade that spawned the "teen movie." Unlike some of the others, this at least has some redeeming and touching moments and I think it will definitely appeal to a younger audience.
