Yep. You saw that right. Josie and the Pussycats. The rockin’ band from Archie’s hometown of Riverdale find themselves adapted into a major motion picture. This movie landed during the peak of the boyband/girlband explosion during the late 90s and early 00s and made a pretty funny commentary on the nature of that business and the fans that fueled it. The premise of the movie finds our favorite Cats trying to find an audience at a bowling alley at the start of their career… The only problem is, nobody cares. It’s a bit disheartening for the girls, but luckily, a major record executive lands from an exploding plane near Riverdale and sees the girls as a potential new face of his label. From there, the girls find themselves having the experience of a lifetime as they finally find exposure to the masses and become household names. But, alas, the fun has to stop eventually, and it does when a rift is formed between Josie and Valerie… But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Why am I talking to you about Josie and the Pussycats? It’s just so out of character, right? But the thing is, it really boils down to Rachael Leigh Cook and Rosario Dawson. Can you really blame me? Those two actresses are what drew me towards the movie, but after viewing it, there was so much more to the movie. For starters, this movie was a strong PG-13 outing… There were a nice assortment of crude jokes and inappropriate behaviour going on in the movie as well as a mostly nude Tara Reid at the beginning of the movie. And then there’s Alan Cummings and Parkey Posey… As far as I’m concerned, those two bring a wave of legitimacy to the project that other comic adaptations could only hope for. The songs in the movie weren’t half-bad either, which being a movie about a rock band, I’m glad they took the time to write some actual songs and not jingles. Another great thing about this movie is it’s similarity to the John Carpenter classic, “They Live”, but I wont go into detail about what that similarity actually is. But… How does the movie stack up against the source material?

Well, we’ve got a blond, brunette, and a redhead in a band. That’s about all you need. The characters act like their comic counterparts; Josie is the mostly stable leader, Melody is the ditzy, but sexy blond, and Valerie is the strong and clear minded brunette. But, the filmmakers took it further and added the other core characters of the book as well. The snobby rich twins and Josie’s boyfriend are also featured in the movie. One of the characters even goes as far as to justify her presence in the movie by literally stating that she was in the comic. Speaking of which, there’s a nice bit of fourth-wall breaking that occurs in the movie and it never seems tacky when it happens. It’s genuinely funny. That aside, there isn’t really much else to say about the transition from the page to the silver screen. The film drops the timeless era attitude of the Archie comics for a more modern view of things and movie uses the more well-known lineup of the Pussycats. That’s right, this isn’t a commonly known fact. Originally, the band lineup had a different character in place of Valerie. There used to be a character, named Pepper, who used to be the groups resident brunette. Then one day, she was gone, along with another character, with no real explanation. The new brunette was the African-American character, Valerie.

So, that’s it. A movie about Josie (the redhead), Melody (the blond), and Valerie (the brunette) is one of my favorite comic adaptations. Roger Ebert gave the film half of a star (out of 4) and had this to say, “Josie and the Pussycats are not dumber than the Spice Girls, but they’re as dumb as the Spice Girls, which is dumb enough.” Whatever. Ebert didn’t like Howard the Duck either. The man has no taste. See ya next time.

-Fleet

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