‘Josie and the Pussycats’ or — ‘Pop’ Art?
If I had to sell you on ‘Josie and the Pussycats’ (2001), and trust me — I REALLY want to sell you on ‘Josie and the Pussycats’, then I’d tell you it contains the best A Flock of Seagulls joke Hollywood has ever produced. So, if you’re a fan of Space Age Love Song (and everybody should be a fan of Space Age Love Song) then dear god, you need to see this wonderful movie ASAP.
Pop band The Pussycats — Josie (Rachel Leigh Cook), Melody (Tara Reid) and Valerie (Rosario Dawson) — are signed by an evil major record label promoter, Wyatt Frame (a glorious Alan Cumming), as a front to disguise the fact the company is hiding subliminal advertising messages in its pop songs. The result is one of the best, and funniest, satires about the music industry since Brian De Palma’s ‘Phantom of the Paradise’ (1974) and so visually playful I can completely understand why fans of the Wachowski’s masterpiece ‘Speed Racer’ (2008) have glommed onto this so fiercely.
Based on characters from the Archie cartoon and comic strip, it’s a deliberately manufactured plot about a deliberately manufactured product mocking deliberate manufacturing. At first the barrage of product placement and advertising is obnoxious and offensive… until you realise that’s the point. This might a be sugar-rush of a movie but its teeth are in perfect condition and razor sharp, which could account as to why I’ve fallen somewhat in love with this movie.
It’s just so quotable!
‘Pink is the new red. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!’
‘If I could go back in time and change everything back, I would!’ ‘That’s really cool. If I could go back in time, I would want to meet Snoopy.’
‘Heath Ledger is the new Matt Damon.’
‘Puppies turn into dogs who get old and DIE!’
The entire script consists of deliciously concocted verbal morsels explicitly designed to take the piss and they’re served- up at a relentless and furious rate of knots It’s a delirious blast and the way directors Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont keep this fizzy energy and momentum immaculately balanced is a joy.
Although the film’s secret weapon is, without a doubt, Parker Posey as Fiona, the dastardly CEO of Megarecords, who provides a performance so comedically inspired it’s left me kinda in shock she (along with costume designer, Leesa Evans) didn’t win an Academy Award. There’s a moment where she does one of those suddenly-turn-towards-the-camera-after-an-edit moves that’s so galactically hysterical (her outfit!!!) it left me frantically gasping for breath.
I absolutely adore it when you stumble across a movie that leaves you so rapturously smitten you want to immediately thrust it into the hands of every person you know with the beseeching words “You SO have to watch this!” ‘Josie and the Pussycats’ is one of those movies.
