I'm with the brand

>> Josie and the Pussycats is senseless and evil

by MARK SLUTSKY

There is something very, very wrong about the new big-screen adaptation of Josie and the Pussycats. And it's not just a lousy teen flick--no, it's sick. The past decade has seen a lot of half-assed, poorly written movies aimed at teenagers, but nothing comes close to the sheer contempt Josie's makers seem to have for their audience.

Josie starts by introducing a generic, extremely popular N' Sync-esque boy band, humourously titled DuJour, who have just cottoned on to the fact that there's some sort of subliminal mumbling in their latest track. When they confront their wily, British-accented manager (Alan Cumming), he promptly has them killed. Finding himself in Riverdale, Cumming sets about finding some new patsies. He stumbles upon the scrappy, pop-punk Pussycats (played by Rachael Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson and Tara Reid) and proceeds to makes them stars.

You see, there's this evil plot, cooked up by government operative Parker Posey, to brainwash American teens into being shopping-crazed zombies. Their operation designs the trends that stir the hearts of teenage America, hiding their messages in pop songs. For about five seconds it seems like Josie is admirably advocating some kind of anti-consumerist message. But then comes the kicker: the villains behind this scheme aren't money-hungry corporations. No, in a development straight out of a paranoid Right-wing fantasy, they're the faceless, bureaucratic "government."

And, horribly, Josie packs more advertising content than a week's worth of commercials, all played for self-conscious, good fun. Nearly every shot--every shot, and this is no exaggeration--features some sort of product placement. But that's the point, right? A bullshit excuse--the filmmakers could have, after all, just made up fake products. The film's deluge of logos and accelerated comic-booky style (which is admittedly fun to watch at first) soon make it virtually impossible to watch. It really comes across as some sort of sick, dystopic nightmare.

Adding to the grotesquerie is the portrayal of the band's screaming, babbling teenage fans, shot in extreme close-ups apparently designed to make them look as idiotic and revolting as possible. Very few movies seem as disdainful of their audience to quite the degree of this one. And what the hell does any of this have to do with the comic book? Where's the Pussycats' spaceship, for crying out loud? Not that it was such an integral part of the comic book, but it was a fun part of the spin-off TV show, and you'd think if they were making a big-budget movie, they'd at least stick in the freakin' spaceship. Sure, the gals look fetching in their outfits--and Cook and Dawson aren't bad as Josie and Valerie. But it's not enough: Josie and the Pussycats is bad, but not in the sense that, say, Amy Heckerling's Loser was bad. Josie is just evil.

Josie and the Pussycats is now playing