Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

generationofswine It's not overly good.In fact, it's kind of like the Spice Girls Movie...only about a thousand times better...which makes it about as good as your standard direct-to-video sci-fi film.Only with Rachael Leigh Cook which, if you were like me, you were absolutely in love with her and, as a result, you watched it a heck of a lot more than you would even the best direct-to-video Sci-Fi film.So you have a plot about subliminal messaging that would fit better in a '60s era Bond film than a movie like this...except, today the plot and the movie work a heck of a lot better than they did in 2001 when it first came out.In fact, when it was released it really deserved a 4/10 tops and that was really only "I'm in Love with Rachael Leigh Cook" points.Now, in 2017 it actually deserves a 7/10 it is a much better and more relevant movie today than when it was first released.Unfortunately that's not saying anything about the quality of Josie and the Pussycats, it's still really just a better version of the Spice Girls Movie...It's really just saying a heck of a lot about the movies of this current era in Hollywood that even changes the relevance of the film.So, there you have it. The bottom line is, Rachael Leigh Cook is awesome, most movies in 2017 kind of really stink, and if you loved the Spice Girls Movie this is going to be like Citizen Kane for you.

Python Hyena Josie and the Pussycats (2001): Dir: Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan / Cast: Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid, Rosario Dawson, Alan Cumming, Parker Posey: One of those numb founded ideas that dares viewers to remain until the end. The Pussycats are a girl band used to brainwash people in a scheme by Alan Cumming as a record producer. This all leads up to a pathetic fight sequence with an impersonator making an ass of himself. It is amazing that it took two directors to put this crap together. Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont previously directed the teen bore Can't Hardly Wait. They prove to great measures that if one director can make films as stupid as Head Over Heels and The Adventures of Joe Dirt, then two directors should be capable of bigger embarrassments. Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid and Rosario Dawson play the trio of morons in the band. They are the reason special education classes were invented. Cumming is capable of much better and should have known better. Parker Posey also shows up in this garbage because her career wasn't far enough in the crapper yet. This is the kind of film one leaves out in the sun just to see whether it will be damaged. After all, it wouldn't put anyone out of anything of worth. The only area of compliment is its reference to pop culture but the film is cheesy and foolishly idiotic with a band that makes more noise than music. Score: 1 / 10

vbsocoolio This could be a slightly biased seeing as how I fell in love with this movie as a child and it holds a bounty of nostalgic appeal to me but now watching it some 11 years later I gotta say it holds up pretty well.You'll find immediately that the cast of characters is really lovable. Even Fiona, the evil head of Mega Records, and Wyatt Frame, the evil manager, you'll find yourself enjoying their evil 'campiness' by the end. And I find it's almost impossible to not enjoy the Pussycats themselves. The actors and actresses in this movie really give their all in their performances.The style of the movie would be the next thing that really jumps out at you. Being an early 2000s movie the style is positively reeking 90s charm especially in the type of clothes and pop culture references. Each scene is color coded to correspond with the fads in the movie which helps the main characters stick out. Not to mention the loads and loads and loads of subliminal messaging that covers nearly every inch of the sets and was apparently so fitting that I didn't even question it until watching the movie again years later. Overall it's a really fun and eye- catching style.Finally the premise of the movie. It deals with the idea of subliminal messages and pushing items through music and television. Something that I think portray well through their overblown sets and comedy. Either way I think it's a really fun and interesting movie and it's worth looking into.

moonmonday Josie and the Pussycats is a film that a lot of people understandably avoided upon its release. Not only was it surrounded by the unpleasant controversy of equally unpleasant Archie Comics completely screwing over their most famous artist of over 40 years -- who was reasonably outraged of their unauthorised usage of a character based off his wife -- but it was also very clearly a desperate attempt to cash in on characters that had not featured prominently in any popular media for years.Entertainment does move in cycles, and it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that, in the squeaky-clean teenybop year of 2001, that one of the original squeaky-clean teenybop groups would attempt to stage a comeback. Archie Comics as a company are well-known for attempting to exploit any and every possible trend or fad, and they can't really be blamed for that. However, the real-world events behind the film completely ruin its attempted message.Essentially, the message of the film attempts to convey exploitative corporate (and governmental) evils. It's impossible to take it on its own, however, despite the directors' clear attempt to make the characters and circumstances their own: it's a film attempting to take the moral high ground on the topic of corporate evil, made possible by a company that at the time was committing one of its most grievous corporate evils. Because of that alone, the film is undermined before it even begins.There are some amusing moments and some satire that works in the film. The acting isn't too terrible for the most part, although there are some truly shameful performances in it, and by that I mean career lows. I can't imagine most of the cast would happily recall Josie and the Pussycats as a film they were too proud of making. Between the mediocre-to-bad songs, the self-aware attempts at humour that almost always try too hard, and terrible miscasting in places, it's difficult to feel much affection for the film.Even for fans of the comic (Josie hadn't had a regular series of her own in nearly 20 years when this film was released), the film couldn't help but be a disappointment: the actors barely resemble the characters they're intended to be, such as the skinny Alan M. who is a mousy, terribly untalented folk singer. While his looks don't thrill, he also doesn't have a personality to make up for it. What happened to Alan M. the muscular blond roadie? What about the Cabots, longtime best enemies of Josie and her gang? They didn't even pop in Pepper for a cameo.The worst thing about the film is that it really didn't know what it wanted to be or who it wanted to appeal to as an audience. People who already knew Josie and the Pussycats would be insulted by the 'interpretation' of the characters, which were far off-base and barely included any of the memorable cast from DeCarlo's comics. People unfamiliar with them would either not be interested in a superficially teenybopper film or put off by the heavy-handed attempt at satire which simply falls flat more times than not. Was it a romance, a satire, a parody, a comedy, a chick flick, a friendship movie, a romance...what? It's all over the map, and not in a way that respectably combines themes to form a stronger whole. In this film, Josie and the Pussycats could have been replaced by anyone, and nobody would have noticed the difference.Of course, it also didn't help that by 2001, even the most popular girl group in years, the Spice Girls, had largely faded off the map and gone their separate ways. By 2001, people of all ages were growing tired of the sentiment embraced by the film Pussycats; they wanted a break.While the intentions of the film might have been honourable in questioning corporate endorsements and government roles in popular media and entertainment, the film itself was not realised as well as it could have -- and should have -- been. Surrounded by the controversy of the nastiness of its own corporate master, Josie and the Pussycats is an exercise in irony more than anything else, and on so many levels. For a film that makes such fun of pre-fabricated pop music and artificial groomed 'instant celebrities', it certainly tries to dole out those very things, which is regrettably hypocritical. So it fails even as a commentary, even if taken on its own merits, apart from Archie Comics and their machinations. It's not very funny, it's not that interesting, it's nothing that hasn't been done before, it's not subtle, the music isn't very good, the acting isn't that great, the casting is terrible, and well...it isn't Josie and the Pussycats at all.