Premise: A struggling band in Riverdale are plucked from obscurity and turned into a phenomenon overnight by a record company with nefarious intentions.
I remember the horrible reviews when this came out. I've more recently heard the very favorable take on the movie on the Blank Check podcast. I definitely land right in the middle of that spectrum. The movie is better and more enjoyable than a lot of movies, including from that era. The central trio of Rachael Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson, and Tara Reid are a nice snapshot of that era. I don't really get why Cook has been relegated to Hallmark movies and voice work at this point. I guess she never blew me away in a performance, but I'd've thought she'd get one or two more big opportunities after this movie. Those never came though. Perhaps she just got unlucky picking them. Tara Reid kind of doomed herself and has become a punchline over the years. She had a good run for half a decade though and is really good at weaponizing the bimbo role. Rosario Dawson has had the biggest career of the three, and that much is correct. What really makes this movie fun is Alan Cumming and Parker Posey in deranged villain roles. No one in this movie is subtle, and that's the right way to play it. The fact that nothing about it is subtle makes it hilarious how some reviewers at the time didn't seem to understand the point of all the product placement. There are actually critiques of this movie that there's too much product placement. Are people really that dense?
I wonder how this movie plays for anyone born after about 1995. This is such a snapshot in time. I mean, you can practically pick the release year just by casting Cook, Dawson, and Reid in the lead roles. Total Request Live has been around for a long time in one form or another, but that Carson Daly era (only 5 years) was a lightning in a bottle situation that lined up with the boy band and pop princess dominated music craze of the late 90s/early 00s. That movement in music was a "fuck you" to the anti-corporation Gen-X and grunge. It seemed like the only thing as ubiquitous as this pop music was the resentment of its success. Josie and the Pussycats isn't a "great" movie, but it sure is an amazing time capsule.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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