Rather than ignoring the fact that it’s based on a cheap, disposable cartoon property, Josie embraces that fact. Its bright colors and goofy attitude honor both the Hanna-Barbera cartoon and Archie comics that birthed the characters, but there’s a strong satirical bite to the story and humor that modernizes the musty material and makes it capable of sustaining its own film-length narrative. Josie and the Pussycats may be the finest example of adapting cartoon material to live action without being a straight tonal translation. The default for live-action adaptations of kids’ cartoons tends to be a more or less straight tonal translation - think the Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films - and even more experimental efforts, like Robert Altman’s much-maligned (but secretly great) Popeye, know well enough to recognize and honor the material’s cartoon origins even as they establish their own distinct tone.
#JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS VIDEO WARS MOVIE#
This isn’t to say that a kiddie cartoon couldn’t beget a serious-minded live-action adaptation, but movie history is not exactly brimming with successful examples of that approach.
Jerrica/Jem (Audrey Peeples) seems thrilled to be a rock star. Instead, it shoots for a sort of middle ground between coming-of-age story and cautionary fame tale, piling too much narrative and emotional weight onto its tissue-thin cartoon foundation. (The dark, lackluster trailer for the film turned off a lot of fans before the movie even hit theaters.) Outside of perhaps Juliette Lewis’s teeth-gnashing performance as evil Starlight Enterprises honcho Erica Raymond, there’s nothing about this Jem that could be called even remotely cartoonish. The strangest thing about Jem is how much effort it puts into ignoring its Day-Glo Saturday-morning-cartoon origins.
1) Play to your source material’s strengths In honor of the movie that Jem could have been, let’s look at some of the lessons it could, and should, have learned from its vastly superior spiritual successor.
#JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS VIDEO WARS UPDATE#
Jem is the moody, self-centered teenager to Josie’s "punk-rock prom queen," and while that theoretically could make for a pointed modern update of the earlier film’s sunny worldview, Jem is too thematically and emotionally vacant to be afforded such consideration. Hell, the titles even echo each other.īut where Josie is bright, funny, and surprisingly daring, Jem is dreary, somber, and utterly banal. Jem has same basic DNA as Josie: It’s a teen-focused musical with a music industry setting, based on a cartoon property ages past its cultural expiration date. While it’s impossible to definitively predict the strange alchemy that creates a cult film, it’s a safe bet that Jem will not enjoy the same sort of appreciation down the road. But the cheeky adaptation of the musty Archie Comics characters-cum- 1970s-cartoon has accrued a significant cult following in the years since it slunk out of theaters and on to home video.ĭespite being perhaps the most 2001 movie imaginable - its pop music world is one of Total Request Live, physical media, and brick-and-mortar record stores - Josie still plays well today as both a tweaked musical comedy and a dark satire of the music industry. Now, granted, Josie wasn’t exactly a critical darling when it premiered - reviews could charitably be called "mixed" - and it was a certified box office bomb. Perhaps the only positive thing I can say about the truly, truly, truly terrible Jem is that it conjures up memories of another film with which it shares many surface-level similarities, but that manages to succeed in every way Jem fails: 2001’s Josie and the Pussycats. Pulling the movie is an unprecedented move for a wide release, but makes good business sense in light of something that not only fails resoundingly as a film, but also fails as a nostalgia piece - which, honestly, might be the greater sin in today’s pop cultureverse.
Chu's weaksauce adaptation of the 1980s Hasbro toy turned cartoon is being yanked from the vast majority of theaters just two weeks after opening due to its dismal numbers, Yahoo Finance reports, having grossed a mere $2.1 million so far. It looks like the Jem and the Holograms movie might make it into the history books after all - but not for a positive reason.
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