Review of Josie and the Pussycats (2001) by Ben L — 11 Nov 2015

I'll go out on a limb and defend this movie. It's unabashedly lightweight fluff, but at the same time the film has a moderately subversive message mocking advertising and product placement masquerading as lightweight entertainment.

For a film that could easily have been the type of fluffy entertainment that the film is mocking, it's kind of rises above that, even if the film still has a pretty lightweight tone. The film, obviously, tells the story of the Riverdale rock band, Josie and the Pussycats and their rise to the top.

The cleverness comes when they begin dealing with devious managers and produces played by the great Alan Cumming and Parker Posey. Cummings and Posey are really too good for this film, but their presence definitely brings a higher level of comedy to the picture.

You also get some other fine supporting part for Seth Green and Breckin Meyer as members of the annoying boy-band Du Jour. You also get Eugene Levy playing himself in a funny camera and you even get Carson Daly making fun of his pop culture persona.

And look fast for Katharine Isabelle before she broke out with "Ginger Snaps." And not to neglect the Pussycats, they are all very likably portrayed by Rachael Leigh Cook, as Josie, Tara Reid, and Rosario Dawson.

This film is certainly not high art or even a message movie, but it does have good enough of sense to know that it's fluff and takes a clever self-relative approach to the lightweight material. One interesting note of trivia, several of the cast members continued to work together on Seth Green's "Robot Chicken," including Breckin Meyer, Donald Faison, Rachael Leigh Cook, and Rosario Dawson.

And another interesting item of note, Alan Cumming played a similar part in the equally fluffy Spice Girls film vehicle, "Spice World." That film also had the good sense to realize that it was silly fluff, as compared to the ridiculously self serious Brittany Spears vehicle "Crossroads" or the even worse Mariah Carrey vehicle "Glitter.

" Maybe it helped here that Josie and the Pussycats are not real musicals with real egos who were more comfortable being silly.