Illustration by Michael DiMilo
★★★★★
What’s New, Pussycat?: Review of Josie and the Pussycats
By Geoff Carter
Our favorite theater, The Oriental, is part of Milwaukee Film, a non-profit institution dedicated to (according to their mission statement) “entertaining, educating, and engaging our community through cinematic experiences… where we are committed to high-quality and accessible film programming.” (MKE Film). And they do live up to this promise.
Besides sponsoring their annual internationally recognized film festival, MKE Film provides an eclectic selection of independent, foreign, and specialty films. It’s a place to see movies you can’t find anywhere else. This past season, the award-winning documentary No Other Land and obscure (though Oscar-nominated) independent features like Nickel Boysran at the theater.
Films like Do the Right Thing, X, Drylongso, and Get Out were featured during Black History Month—and it is a treat to see some of these classics on the big screen again, as are revivals, like the newly released beautiful 4K version of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. On top of all this are the staff picks: favorites of the MKE employees brought in for special screenings. Past picks have included The Warriors, Ball of Fire, and Mo’ Better Blues.
This last Saturday, we attended the screening of another staff favorite (and one of my all-time favs) Josie and the Pussycats. Made in 2001, before the world started spinning off its axis, this movie is a combination of lighthearted fun, great music, and biting (but not so subtle) social satire.
As featured in The Archies comics—yep, it’s those pussycats—the cartoon all-girl leopard skin-clad girls are trying to rock their way to fame and fortune. In the live-action film version, the Pussycats are lead singer and guitarist Josie (Rachael Leigh Cook), bassist Val (Rosario Dawson), and drummer Melody (Tara Reid). Melody is a classic spacey blonde (who has moments of unexpectedly brilliant insight), Val is the practical realist, while Josie is the leader of the pack. The characters are little more than stereotypes, but that’s okay. That’s all they need to be. This is, after all, just a comic book comedy. Right?
The opening scene, in which the boy band Du Jour is doing a PR stop at the airport before boarding their private jet is sheer comic brilliance. A crowd of screaming teens, all wearing pink, receive the preening and posturing boys as if they were royalty. They perform their hit, “Back Door Lover” (without a trace of irony) while covered in the glitzy glitter of the pop star culture. Du Jour is shepherded into the jet by record label exec Wyatt Frame (Alan Cumming) onto the plane where he cajoles and humors the spoiled starboys until they ask one too many questions. Exit Du Jour.
Enter Josie and the Pussycats. They are scraping rock bottom when they are suddenly and improbably discovered by record label executive Wyatt Frame. He sees the band, signs them without hearing a single note, and immediately glams them up. It is eventually revealed that Wyatt, along with Mega Records super exec Fiona (Parker Posey) is using pop music to subliminally sell everything from clothes to beer to Big Macs to—of course—records.
This self-referential consciousness is the axis on which Josie and the Pussycats turns. As the evil capitalists secretly place subliminal messages in the Pussycats’ music, we, as the audience are bombarded with enough product placement in the film to fill ten movies. MacDonald’s, Revlon, Target, Coca-Cola, Nike, and many, many more. The social satire has—quite good-naturedly—taken aim at itself.
The film’s meta is extended even to the characters. When asked why she’s on the plane with the band, Alexandra (Missy Pyle) says off-handedly, “Because I was in the comic book,” and then shrugs it off when her brother pursues it. Clips from real-life MTV shows Behind the Music and Carson Daily’s Total Request Live—as shown in the film–are tools used by the government to control teen perceptions and tastes.
Besides working as a sophisticated satire, this film is an infectiously hilarious comedy. From the brilliant lampooning of the boy band craze—Du Jour, the perfect name—to the goofy spaciness of drummer Melody to the rapid-fire back and forth in the girls’ bathroom scene, the film is a non-stop comic joyride (suitable for all ages). While it may seem, and on some levels, it is a teen girl glitterfest, the film tells a genuinely warm tale of friendship and loyalty.
Co-directors and writers Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan created a sophisticated multi-layered social satire that masquerades as a goofy teen rock and roll movie. From the fisheye camera shots of screaming fans to the brainwashed teens shopping and shopping to Fiona’s subliminal “nerve center” to the final more effective subliminal marketing technique, Josie and the Pussycats is nothing short of brilliant.
The music was great and still stands the test of time. Maybe not the Du Jour stuff. Written by a diverse group of musicians, including Matthew Sweet, Jane Wiedlin of The Go-Go’s, Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne—and more—the Pussycat songs are brilliantly catchy, danceable, and a ton of fun.
The cast is equally outstanding. Rachael Leigh Cook is a sweet every girl, gutsy enough to rock out but sweet and naïve enough to not have a spiky punk rock edge. Cook conveys the Josie vibe seemingly effortlessly, partly because of the chemistry between her and the other band members. Rosario Dawson is more edgy and world wise than Josie but is full of self-doubt. Tara Reid’s Melody is as enthusiastically dumb and naïve as they come, but there is a depth to her that pops out at the most unexpected times.
The supporting cast of Missi Pyle, Parker Posey, Alan Cumming, and Seth Rogen is amazing. Pyle is hilarious as the clueless Alexandra while Posey and Cumming are perfectly cast as the socially inept villainous foils.
When we went to the theater to see the film, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The last times we had gone attendance had been kind of sparse, but this time the theater was at least three quarters full for a three o’clock showing. Some audience members wore leopard skin tights and cat ear hats and some (annoyingly) sang along with the songs. Seeing it in a theater was a great experience.
Josie and the Pussycats has transcended its humble beginnings (it was a box-office bomb) but has since gotten its proper critical appreciation. Fans are rediscovering it and loving it, partly because in our present over-produced pop music tunes that sound as if they all came out of the same can, its message is now more pertinent than ever. This is a film that was ahead of its time, and now is a perfect time to rediscover it.
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