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Josie and the Pussycats
Universal // PG-13 // August 14, 2001
List Price: $26.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Movie:
I've had to do this only a few times throughout the period that I've been writing reviews for this website - to simply delete the review that I wrote after seeing the film theatrically and start over again. It doesn't change my opinion of the movie - I still think that "Josie and the Pussycats" will go down as one of my least favorite pictures of 2001. The only thing that I'll generally be changing is the fact that the first review simply was 5 paragraphs of anger. It was one of the few times in the past year that the claws really came out when I was writing a review. Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont worked together a few years back to direct "Can't Hardly Wait", a little teen comedy that, although rather sloppily made, had charm to spare and a few decent performances. It was a nice, sweet movie with a few good bits and it stands out as a "guilty pleasure" favorite. "Pussycats", on the other hand, has the two not only providing a badly written screenplay, but making a wealth of other questionable choices.
Taken from the pages of the comic book, "Josie" stars Rachel Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson and Tara Reid as Josie, Valerie and Melody, three teen girls who want to get their band "The Pussycats" into even a modest level of stardom. Unfortunately, they're stuck playing the local bowling alley, with an uninterested looking audience on what looks to be league day. Elsewhere, the world's biggest boy-band Dujour catches onto a subplot by the record company to put subliminal messages into the music - they're "taken care of". The company's rep (Alan Cumming) has to seek out a new band to become popular overnight, and that's when he finds the trio of girls.
What follows is the usual - girls have to deal with fame, the bad guy (and girl, as Parker Posey turns in a unusually terrible performance as the label's head) and there's some thin bits of romance thrown in. The film's main plot is that this "subliminal" advertising in music is getting kids who have spending money to go out and buy whatever they're told. There's more logos and promos in this film to count - TDK, McDonalds, Virgin Megastore, Target, Bounce - endless product placements seem to crowd every frame. Although I tore at the film about the film's constant product placement, the filmmakers actually weren't paid for the massive amount of logos that populate every wall, every table, every everything. As Elfont and Kaplan discuss in the commentary, this was apparently a joke about how logos are everywhere we look in our daily life - in a movie though, to have logos plastered up on nearly every inch of available space in the frame on nearly every scene is painfully distracting and often extremely irritating - funny or even amusing are not words that I would use to describe this poor choice.Beyond that, in a film that's supposed to be a satire of product-placement oriented society, is it really that smart of an idea to have production placement in every scene?
The other unfortunate bit of business is that the filmmakers have taken three relatively fine actresses and get rather uninteresting performances from all of them. Leigh Cook has never really proven herself capable of anything beyond "She's All That" and again, doesn't really craft much of a performance for Josie. Tara Reid turns in a respectable performance playing the least intelligent character in the film - it's not exactly an award-winning performance, but in a movie where everyone either overacts or acts with such little energy, Reid actually seems to be having fun with the role. Rosario Dawson is also decent, but generally underused.
"Josie and the Pussycats", in this time period where pop music rules the charts, may not have been as bad of an idea as it sounded like it was going to be. But, in the hands of Elfont and Kaplan, it's a declawed look at pop culture and the recording industry that's often simply a mess of a movie.
The DVD
VIDEO: The one very positive thing that "Josie and the Pussycats" offers is gorgeous, vibrant, beautifully colorful cinematography by Matthew Libatique (who also worked on the very different "Requiem For A Dream"). His cinematography looks positively stellar on Universal's terrific 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer, which presents excellent sharpness and detail. The picture throughout the movie looks well-defined and often with solid depth.
The picture displays no instances of edge enhancement or pixelation, with only a couple of very minor speckles on the print used. The film's most impressive visual element though are the colors. The picture offers a remarkably vibrant color palette that looks spectacular on this DVD release. Colors look well-saturated and fabulously rendered, with no instances of smearing or other flaws. Excellent work from Universal.
SOUND: "Josie and the Pussycats" is presented in both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 audio, but the movie itself is rather lacking in sound use overall and neither format provides a really engaging surround-sound experience. The film is simply a comedy before anything else and as such, really doesn't have any use for the surrounds in that regard. But with the film's consistent power-pop music from the band, I would think that the surrounds would be used more for the music than they are. The music does come through with nice presence and audio quality, though, otherwise. Dialogue suprisingly does sound a bit rough in a few sequences, but I didn't think that this caused too much concern.
MENUS:: Basic non-animated menus are accompanied by a song from the film on the main menu, but no audio on the sub-menus.
EXTRAS:
Commentary: This is a commentary from directors Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, who are joined by producer Marc Platt. Kaplan and Elfont were famously joined by actor Seth Green for their "Can't Hardly Wait" commentary, where Green picked up a British accent for the first half of the track, eventually irritating the directing duo. Green's addition is referenced again as the "Josie" commentary starts and although the duo aren't as funny as Green, they still manage to put forth a few very funny jokes throughout the track.
What's a bit different here are the attitudes of the three towards the movie. On the "Wait" commentary, Green consistently ripped on the duo's work (although in a good-natured way), but they also refreshingly admitted where they failed and what they would have done differently the second time around. Here, joined by Platt, they engage in a bit more praise and promotional talk.
Still, there's quite a few funny stories from the set as well as some interesting production discussion of how some of the scenes were filmed as well as where. A good commentary that, in my opinion, is a more enjoyable experience than watching the film itself.
Backstage Pass: Sort of like another one of Universal's "Spotlight On Location" documentaries, this is a look at the making of the movie. The only problem is it isn't as good as some of those "Spotlight" documentaries turn out to be. Where I've called some of these DVD documentaries "extended trailers", this is an "extremely extended trailer", using promotional footage and interviews, with quite a few clips filling out the length all the way to 25 minutes or so. May be worth a viewing for some of the film's fans, but I doubt it'll get much repeat views.
Deleted Scenes: 3 deleted scenes are presented - none of them really are of too much interest, with the exception of another over-the-top bit of business from Parker Posey.
Videos: Music videos for the Pussycats' "Three Small Words" and Dujour's "Backdoor Lover" & "Dujour Around The World" videos.
Also: Theatrical trailer, production notes, cast and crew bios, recommendations.
Final Thoughts: "Josie and the Pussycats" could maybe have been a sharp, funny film in the hands of different filmmakers and it's unfortunate that Elfont and Kaplan haven't seemed to build upon their previous effort. Universal's DVD provides top-notch picture quality and some fine extras, but audio quality doesn't quite reach expectations. Fans of the movie will be quite pleased with the DVD, while others would probably be best advised to stay away or, at the most, check it out as a rental.
I've had to do this only a few times throughout the period that I've been writing reviews for this website - to simply delete the review that I wrote after seeing the film theatrically and start over again. It doesn't change my opinion of the movie - I still think that "Josie and the Pussycats" will go down as one of my least favorite pictures of 2001. The only thing that I'll generally be changing is the fact that the first review simply was 5 paragraphs of anger. It was one of the few times in the past year that the claws really came out when I was writing a review. Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont worked together a few years back to direct "Can't Hardly Wait", a little teen comedy that, although rather sloppily made, had charm to spare and a few decent performances. It was a nice, sweet movie with a few good bits and it stands out as a "guilty pleasure" favorite. "Pussycats", on the other hand, has the two not only providing a badly written screenplay, but making a wealth of other questionable choices.
Taken from the pages of the comic book, "Josie" stars Rachel Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson and Tara Reid as Josie, Valerie and Melody, three teen girls who want to get their band "The Pussycats" into even a modest level of stardom. Unfortunately, they're stuck playing the local bowling alley, with an uninterested looking audience on what looks to be league day. Elsewhere, the world's biggest boy-band Dujour catches onto a subplot by the record company to put subliminal messages into the music - they're "taken care of". The company's rep (Alan Cumming) has to seek out a new band to become popular overnight, and that's when he finds the trio of girls.
What follows is the usual - girls have to deal with fame, the bad guy (and girl, as Parker Posey turns in a unusually terrible performance as the label's head) and there's some thin bits of romance thrown in. The film's main plot is that this "subliminal" advertising in music is getting kids who have spending money to go out and buy whatever they're told. There's more logos and promos in this film to count - TDK, McDonalds, Virgin Megastore, Target, Bounce - endless product placements seem to crowd every frame. Although I tore at the film about the film's constant product placement, the filmmakers actually weren't paid for the massive amount of logos that populate every wall, every table, every everything. As Elfont and Kaplan discuss in the commentary, this was apparently a joke about how logos are everywhere we look in our daily life - in a movie though, to have logos plastered up on nearly every inch of available space in the frame on nearly every scene is painfully distracting and often extremely irritating - funny or even amusing are not words that I would use to describe this poor choice.Beyond that, in a film that's supposed to be a satire of product-placement oriented society, is it really that smart of an idea to have production placement in every scene?
The other unfortunate bit of business is that the filmmakers have taken three relatively fine actresses and get rather uninteresting performances from all of them. Leigh Cook has never really proven herself capable of anything beyond "She's All That" and again, doesn't really craft much of a performance for Josie. Tara Reid turns in a respectable performance playing the least intelligent character in the film - it's not exactly an award-winning performance, but in a movie where everyone either overacts or acts with such little energy, Reid actually seems to be having fun with the role. Rosario Dawson is also decent, but generally underused.
"Josie and the Pussycats", in this time period where pop music rules the charts, may not have been as bad of an idea as it sounded like it was going to be. But, in the hands of Elfont and Kaplan, it's a declawed look at pop culture and the recording industry that's often simply a mess of a movie.
The DVD
VIDEO: The one very positive thing that "Josie and the Pussycats" offers is gorgeous, vibrant, beautifully colorful cinematography by Matthew Libatique (who also worked on the very different "Requiem For A Dream"). His cinematography looks positively stellar on Universal's terrific 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer, which presents excellent sharpness and detail. The picture throughout the movie looks well-defined and often with solid depth.
The picture displays no instances of edge enhancement or pixelation, with only a couple of very minor speckles on the print used. The film's most impressive visual element though are the colors. The picture offers a remarkably vibrant color palette that looks spectacular on this DVD release. Colors look well-saturated and fabulously rendered, with no instances of smearing or other flaws. Excellent work from Universal.
SOUND: "Josie and the Pussycats" is presented in both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 audio, but the movie itself is rather lacking in sound use overall and neither format provides a really engaging surround-sound experience. The film is simply a comedy before anything else and as such, really doesn't have any use for the surrounds in that regard. But with the film's consistent power-pop music from the band, I would think that the surrounds would be used more for the music than they are. The music does come through with nice presence and audio quality, though, otherwise. Dialogue suprisingly does sound a bit rough in a few sequences, but I didn't think that this caused too much concern.
MENUS:: Basic non-animated menus are accompanied by a song from the film on the main menu, but no audio on the sub-menus.
EXTRAS:
Commentary: This is a commentary from directors Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, who are joined by producer Marc Platt. Kaplan and Elfont were famously joined by actor Seth Green for their "Can't Hardly Wait" commentary, where Green picked up a British accent for the first half of the track, eventually irritating the directing duo. Green's addition is referenced again as the "Josie" commentary starts and although the duo aren't as funny as Green, they still manage to put forth a few very funny jokes throughout the track.
What's a bit different here are the attitudes of the three towards the movie. On the "Wait" commentary, Green consistently ripped on the duo's work (although in a good-natured way), but they also refreshingly admitted where they failed and what they would have done differently the second time around. Here, joined by Platt, they engage in a bit more praise and promotional talk.
Still, there's quite a few funny stories from the set as well as some interesting production discussion of how some of the scenes were filmed as well as where. A good commentary that, in my opinion, is a more enjoyable experience than watching the film itself.
Backstage Pass: Sort of like another one of Universal's "Spotlight On Location" documentaries, this is a look at the making of the movie. The only problem is it isn't as good as some of those "Spotlight" documentaries turn out to be. Where I've called some of these DVD documentaries "extended trailers", this is an "extremely extended trailer", using promotional footage and interviews, with quite a few clips filling out the length all the way to 25 minutes or so. May be worth a viewing for some of the film's fans, but I doubt it'll get much repeat views.
Deleted Scenes: 3 deleted scenes are presented - none of them really are of too much interest, with the exception of another over-the-top bit of business from Parker Posey.
Videos: Music videos for the Pussycats' "Three Small Words" and Dujour's "Backdoor Lover" & "Dujour Around The World" videos.
Also: Theatrical trailer, production notes, cast and crew bios, recommendations.
Final Thoughts: "Josie and the Pussycats" could maybe have been a sharp, funny film in the hands of different filmmakers and it's unfortunate that Elfont and Kaplan haven't seemed to build upon their previous effort. Universal's DVD provides top-notch picture quality and some fine extras, but audio quality doesn't quite reach expectations. Fans of the movie will be quite pleased with the DVD, while others would probably be best advised to stay away or, at the most, check it out as a rental.
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