The politics of ‘Rosie’ and ‘Josie’

By BILL DURYEA

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 10, 2001

STILL JOSIE: Even with its jokes sailing over the heads of the target audience, the movie is saved by a brisk pace and a self-deprecating tone.

Many years before I knew such a thing as sex existed, I understood it was political.

I knew this because between the ages of 7 and 11 I was a devoted viewer of the Saturday morning cartoon Josie and the Pussycats, now resurrected for the big screen. No one watching the all-girl band from Riverdale battle the forces of world evil could help but notice the way Alexandra Cabot, the pushy sister of the band's manager, was always getting them into trouble because she wanted to sit next to Alan M., the handsome roadie who really liked Josie.

Every episode -- from "Chili Today and Hot Tamale" to "All Wong in Hong Kong" -- started with Alexandra trying to push Josie out of the picture. I couldn't figure what all that was about, but I knew it boded ill for the band.

It wasn't until much later that I realized women didn't run things in the early '70s. I was unaware as well that black children were being pelted with rocks on school buses, so it didn't seem strange to me that the Pussycats were racially integrated or that the black bass player, Valerie, was the smartest and most technologically savvy. I didn't know about sexual cliches, so ditsy drummer Melody's being a blond didn't register as more than a coincidence.

The cartoon aired from 1970-72 (Josie and the Pussycats in Outerspace ran two years beyond that). Thirty-two episodes in all. Not such a monumental body of work, but that hardly matters in Hollywood these days. The film adaptation of cartoons and television shows proceeds apace, driven by a legion of baby boomers bent on retreading their youth, sometimes profitably, sometimes not.

After big-screen treatments of Superman, Batman, the Flintstones and Charlie's Angels, I felt a sense of dread as I took my seat for Universal's latest offering to the cartoon remake genre, Josie and the Pussycats.

From the first scene (a wicked spoof of the boy band of the moment, appropriately named DuJour) it's clear the movie is aimed at an MTV age group that knows about the original Josie only from watching the Cartoon Network. If they know the cartoon at all.

But it turns out that the new Josie, written and directed by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, who collaborated on the teen comedy Can't Hardly Wait, is not unlike the old Josie. The plot is thinner than Ally McBeal, and it's got that same adult worldview -- albeit a smart-alecky, satiric one rather than the camouflaged idealism of the original.

When DuJour's evil manager, Wyatt Frame (Alan Cumming) sends the quartet plummeting to an almost certain death in their private jet, he gives the pilot the sign to bail out of the plane with the phrase "Take the Chevy to the levee."

I could hear that reference hit the back wall of the theater on the fly.

With DuJour out of the way, Frame goes scouting for a new band to appease his ruthless boss at Mega Records, Fiona (Parker Posey). He heads straight to Riverdale, where feisty punk rockers the Pussycats (played by teen movie regulars Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid and Rosario Dawson) are stuck playing at the bowling alley. The only thing punk about Josie's band is her T-shirt with the name Sid on it.

No one laid a glove on that one either, is my guess.

Frame signs the band immediately. "Christina Aguilera times three, except one's incredibly tanned," Frame tells his boss.

By this point I was beginning to have some fun deconstructing the uneven script, which took full satiric liberties with its primary target: the ravenous materialism of teenagers. Every scene is plastered with trademarks as teenagers chirpily intone advertising slogans: "Red is the new pink," "I want some Zima," "This is the best CD ever!"

The Pussycats go to No. 1, driven by subliminal messages in the music.

"Doesn't anyone else think it's strange that all this happened in a week?" Josie asks her bandmates.

"No," the other two say with a giggle.

Unfortunately, the movie version maintains the worst of the cartoon's character development: Melody is still the dumb blond. But it loses the powerful, brainy Valerie, who gets shuffled into the mix of hip-hugger fashion and skimpy tops.

Brisk pacing and a self-mocking tone save it. The new Alexandra is no longer the catalyst of the movie. At one point her brother says, "I still can't understand why you're here."

"I'm here because I was in the cartoon," she replies. That may have gotten the biggest laugh of the movie.

At its best, Josie bears some tonal resemblance to Austin Powers. But too often it is more like an inside joke for the writers than a sendup the whole audience is in on. How many people will catch the reference to Tretorns, the '70s tennis sneakers?

Of course, that's what's going to happen when the writing is aimed at the folks who listened to Flock of Seagulls and the marketing is aimed at the listeners of WFLZ-FM 93.3.

In the lobby after the screening, five 13- and 14-year-old girls were singing, from memory, mind you, the words to a song from a movie that hasn't come out yet.

How do you know the lyrics? they were asked.

"From commercials," they squealed.

"I've heard it like seven times," said one.

"Ten times," said another.

So what was the big point of the movie?

"Think for yourself," said Jennifer Onate, 13.

One girl blurted out a question for her friends:

"Hey, but doesn't it make you think what if all the songs we listen to have hidden messages?" said Lucy Young, 14.

"Not really," said Whitney Anderson, 14.

They all giggled.

Ah, well, as I said, it was a long time before I understood what the cartoon was all about.

Movie review: Josie and the Pussycats

• Grade: B-
• Director: Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan
• Cast: Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid, Rosario Dawson, Parker Posey, Alan Cumming
• Screenplay: Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan
• Rating: PG-13; profanity, sexual situations, mild violence

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