Josie and the Pussycats (2001)

Milwaukee, Wisconsin – April 2001.  My Basic Elements of Film making instructor comes into the classroom completely irate; the source of her anger – the Josie and the Pussycats movie. She can’t believe that Hollywood has adapted a second rate Hanna Barbara cartoon into a full length theatrical feature.  It is, in her words, “the death of cinema!” It should be noted that she has not seen the movie, but has already declared it an “irredeemable piece of garbage.”   How can an adaptation of little loved 70s cartoon possibly be good?  

She must have felt vindicated when Josie and the Pussycats opened not only to poor reviews, but poor box office as well. It was a financial failure; grossing a pathetic $14,886,015 (worldwide) on a $39 million budget.  The critics were especially harsh in their assessment of the film; Roger Ebert gave it half a star.  While it may not have been “the death of cinema,” it essentially ended the movie careers of directing/writing team of Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont.

It has baffled me why Josie and the Pussycats performed so poorly at the box office. After all, a movie doesn’t necessarily have to be good in order to be a huge success; just look at the Transformers movies. There a few reasons, I believe, why the movie did extremely poor business:

1)      The source material.  As I mentioned earlier, Josie and the Pussycats wasn’t exactly a beloved cartoon.  In fact, I’m willing to bet that the only exposure most people had to Josie and the Pussycats was their guest appearance on The New Scooby Doo Movies; the cartoon was rarely shown on syndication.  In the 90s, the Cartoon Network did air a few episodes before replacing them with a better known cartoon.  I remember catching one or two episodes and thinking to myself, “This is a second rate Scooby Doo!” 

 On the flip side, devoted fans (all three of them) of the cartoon would probably hate the movie adaptation, because, other than the name of the band, it has almost nothing in common with the show.  Even the music is different; in the cartoon, Josie and her pals played pop rock, whereas in the movie they are more punkish.

2)      The Teen Cycle.  In 2001, the cycle of teen movies was beginning to wear thin.  Audiences were beginning to get sick of these movies and were moving on to better things; two huge fantasy movies would open later that year to great commercial and critical success, Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone and Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. Thus, beginning the rise of the nerd culture.  Hollywood rediscovered the teenage audience in 1996 with the release of Scream. It was a huge success, both financially and critically, and lead to countless imitations and sequels.  This would carry over to the music industry as well; in less than a year’s time the music charts would be dominated by boy bands and female pop singers (it’s important to remember this last point, because Josie and the Pussycats satires the whole teen music scene).  The problem with the teen audience is that it is in a constant state of flux; the same crowd that made Scream a hit in 1996 would probably have little desire to watch Josie and the Pussycats in 2001. Five years maybe a short time, but it’s a huge difference in the lives of teenagers. If Josie and the Pussycats would have been released a year or two earlier, then maybe, it would have done better at the box office. 

3)      Target audience. What audience was Josie and the Pussycats trying to reach? Universal tried to sell it as a teen comedy, but it really isn’t.  It’s lacking the tropes that are largely associated with the teen movie. For instance, it’s not set in a high school, nor is there a well choreographed dance scene at the movie’s climax.  Also, all teen comedies tend be small, self contained stories; they rarely leave their small town setting.  Josie and the Pussycats is a lot more epic in scope; the movie begins in the small town of Riverdale, but in flash the girls are flown to the big city to make their music dreams come true. There’s also a subplot involving the disappearance of a boy band, Du Jour.  It’s a far more ambitious movie than She’s All That or Ten Things I hate About You, therefore, it probably wouldn’t resonate with a tween audience, who have grown accustomed to seeing  Freddie Prinze, Jr win the girl at the end.  It doesn’t work as nostalgia (like Scooby Doo did a year later), because the 1970s cartoon (and comic book) is too obscure. It surely didn’t appeal to the college crowd, largely because it was promoted as being yet another teen comedy.  It is certainly one of the oddest movies to ever come out of a major studio. 

I was working at North Shore Cinemas in 2001, which means I could see movies for free. So, on a whim, I decided to check out Josie and the Pussycats; I was curious to see just how bad it truly was. Maybe, it was due to my low expectations, but I walked out of the theatre completely surprised by the fact that I liked the movie. I was in denial over this fact for some time. I was a film student at UWM; I’m not supposed to like drivel like Josie and the Pussycats. After all, it signified the “Death of Cinema.” When people asked me about the movie, I would merely reply that “it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.” However, I was reluctant to admit I liked it. When I watched it again on cable, I finally had to face the reality of the situation…I LIKED JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS!  I would even go as far to say that it is a genuinely good movie, despite Roger Ebert’s negative review. However, a few critics stepped forward (namely Nathan Rabin of the Onion) and bravely admitted to liking the movie. It made me feel good to know that I was not alone. 

Josie and the Pussycats certainly has its share of flaws; the biggest among them is Tara Reid as the air headed drummer, Mel. Granted, it’s a role that perfectly suits Reid limitations as an actress, but her one note performance gets a bit tiresome after awhile.  Also, the fight scene between her and former TRL host (and ultra tool) Carson Daly completely falls flat! The fight ends with Reid telling Daly that she would never go out with a guy like him. This is an in joke (at the time) as Reid and Daly were dating in real life. It’s a truly groan inducing moment!  It makes even less sense now, considering the two of them broke up shortly after the movie. Thankfully, this joke proves to be the exception rather than the rule.  It is a shame that the filmmakers allowed Daly to appear in the movie, as it dulls the satire; instead of being a merciless attack on the music industry, it’s merely a friendly slap on the wrist. 

While Josie and the Pussycats may fail as a satire, it does make some rather valid points about the music industry; the girls are signed by the record label not because they have any musical talent, but rather they have the right look. Image is everything and the music exec, Wyatt, realizes that the three of them would make a great CD cover.  They happen to be at the right place at the right time; Wyatt has really no interest in their music.  I often wonder how different Britney Spears’ career might have been had the video for “Baby, One More Time” been a rather bland and forgettable affair?  Would teenagers have responded to video if it consisted of her dressed in a t-shirt and jeans singing to some dude across a room, instead of her prancing about in a skimpy school girl outfit? It was essentially the video that sold the song, which, in turn, led to Britney Spears becoming a pop culture phenomenon.  Britney Spears is a great example about how the look is more important than the actual music.  Ditto with the Backstreets Boys and all the other teen sensations that were big in the late 90s.  The movie even acknowledges the short shelf life of most teen pop stars; in the beginning the boy band, Du Jour, is supposedly killed in a plane accident. There is a brief tribute to them on MTV News, which ends with an in memory of "Du Jour 2000 – 2001." It also announces that their record label is going to release special editions of their albums to commemorate this loss.  Their music is not so much a work of artistic expression as it is product that is meant to be consumed and forgotten about. 

Commercialism has run amuk in the world of Josie and the Pussycats; Du Jour’s personal jet airplane has the Target logo painted on its walls. One shot is framed so that when can of Dr. Pepper is thrown into the foreground is aligned with a huge Dr. Pepper billboard in the background. The McDonald's logo lines the walls of Mel's hotel shower.

Even the popular music is just another ad space; the powers that be want to use the girls’ music into brainwashing the youth of America into accepting the newest trends, which they hope to achieve by implanting subliminal messages into their songs.  Josie and her friends are unknowing pawns in this scheme; in one scene, which follows a quick montage of the girls literally climbing up the charts, Josie asks Val and Mel if they find their meteoric rise to the fame odd. They ponder this for a second and then in unison shout, “NO!”  Wyatt momentarily breaks a sweat, afraid that he might have to replace the girls with a much more agreeable band.  It’s a fairly cyclical occurrence; when Du Jour starts to get wise to the tinkering that has been done with their music, Wyatt orders them to be killed, and the parachutes out of the plane, along with the pilots, abandoning the boys to a (seemingly) fiery end.

Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont are an extremely flawed but interesting writing/directing team; their best known movie is probably Can’t Hardly Wait, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt and Ethan Embry.  Their screenplays tend to be a bit muddled at times; this is especially true for Josie and the Pussycats, where supporting characters have a habit of disappearing for long stretches of the movie.  The character that suffers most is Alan M, Josie’s love interest, who fails to make an impression, because he is given very little to do. He comes off as kind of dense; it's not until Josie is given an elaborate make over that he notices that she's actually quite beautiful.  Who knows? Maybe Kaplan and Elfont were sending up She's All That, also starring Rachael Leigh Cook. The romance seems like an after thought; the filmmakers realized they had to appease some convention of the genre, so they shoe horned in Alan M.  It's amazing just how irrelevant he is to the entire story line.

A similar flaw can be found in Can’t Hardly Wait, when Denise (Lauren Ambrose) inexplicable ends up sleeping with Kenny (Seth Green), solely due to the fact that two of them share a pleasant moment (after endlessly bickering for most of the film). It feels absolutely forced and a complete betrayal of the Denise character; she's arguably the most interesting character in the movie, hence it's you feel cheated when she ends up with a loser like Kenny.

On the other hand, there are lot of creative visuals in the films of Kaplan and Elfont; the best example is the introduction of Josie and the Pussycats at the beginning of the film. The girls are seen in close ups, playing their instruments in an unspecified location. They perform a rousing rendition of the (catchy) song “Three Small Words,” then the camera pulls back to reveal that they are playing a gig at a bowling alley. The bowlers respond with complete indifference and carry on with their bowling; the girls are paid five dollars for their effort.  It’s an extremely effective introduction; through a single movement of the camera, we are told all we need to know about the girls and their current situation.  After the show, Josie comments that this may have been their best gig yet. Which makes you wonder what their other gigs must have been like. 

The funniest moment in the entire film is the reappearance of Du Jour at the end of the film. One of the members of the band, Les (Alexander Martin) emerges from the shadows and reveals that he successfully landed in the airplane, and now he, along with his band mates are going to stop Fiona from carrying out her nefarious scheme. The audience is lead to be that the cavalry has come to the rescue; then the camera pans over to reveal that other DuJour members are wrapped in body casts and and barely able to move. Les reveals that he landed the plane in the parking lot of a Metallica concert, and that their rowdy fans "kicked the crap" out of them.  It's an extremely funny pay off to the Du Jour story line.

It is also to Kaplan and Elfont's credit that the characters of Josie and Val never devolve into full fledged cartoon cartoons; they are the glue that holds everything together. If Rachael Leigh Cook and Rosario Dawson would have gone for a more broad, over the top approach, the movie would be overbearing and an absolute pain to watch.  It's easy to root for Josie and Val, because both are immensely likable characters. They also prove perfect foils Fiona (Parker Posey) and Wyatt (Alan Cumming). Posey is wonderfully over the top as the head of record company, Fiona, who despite her success suffers from an inferiority complex; the scene in which she tries to bond with the girls by holding a slumber party is both awkward and hilarious at the same time.  Cumming, however, steals the movie as the always scheming Wyatt. His icy cold demeanor is really a mask he wears, a way to distance himself from a painful childhood. He takes extreme delight in belittling those that he believes are his inferiors, and shows no signs of remorse when he orders Du Jour to be liquidated; murder is all in a day's work to him. 

Josie and the Pussycats is a from a perfect movie, but certainly wasn't deserving of the scorn that it received during its initial release in 2001. It's a fairly clever movie with genuinely fun and likable characters, and, most surprising of all, a fairly good soundtrack. There are certainly for worse ways you could spend your 99 minutes.

Cast: Rachael Leigh Cook (Josie), Rosario Dawson (Val), Tara Reid (Mel), Parker Posey (Fiona), Alan Cumming (Wyatt), Gabriel Mann (Alan M), Paulo Costanzo (Alexander), Missi Pyle (Alexandra), Alexander Martin (Les), Tom Butler (Agent Kelly) Seth Green (Travis), Breckin Meyer (Marco), Donald Faison (D.J.), Eugene Levy (himself), Carson Daly (himself),Aries Spears (the other Carson Daly). 

Directors: Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont.
Screenplay: Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont.
Running Time: 99 min.