Here's Why The Self-Aware Tone Of 'Josie & The Pussycats' Made It A 'Purrrrfect' Sleeper Hit
From the moment Josie and the Pussycats begins, the tone of the film is immediate and flashy, the first shot of screaming enthusiasts waiting to look their idols contact down from their personal jet, and provides their extraordinary lives a jolt of glamour. The pace of the opening sequence mimics a heartbeat of an adoring fan, keen to tell the ready camera why their favorite boy band, Dejour issues. Fans are absolutely going loopy, sheer pandemonium happening all over a group of guys who know their manner round a three-minute tune entire with fancy footwork, but the sweet foursome doesn't appear to be aware of anything apart from their fabulousness; it is readily established the individuals of Dejour are utterly oblivious to the fast-pumping company system which is absolutely activated all around them.
'Josie' Is In On The Joke
Despite the sense of oblivion going down on the screen, the audience is completely "in" on the comic story. After completing a performance in entrance of their private jet, the staff board their non-public plane which is adorned with product placement; the bullseye brand from Target is in every single place the airplane. The band is noticed consuming from Diet Coke cans and reading SeventeenMagazine. The instant bombarding of product placement would possibly appear funny or a bit formidable to the viewer, however it is soon established the movie has a backbone in the back of all the glitz and glamour.
The viewer is soon introduced to Wyatt Frame, Dejour's supervisor. Wyatt's demeanor is all business. The British file govt is keeping a silent and secure watch on the surrounding activity; when Dejour starts to question Wyatt about one thing mysterious happening with their recordings, Wyatt has his finger on the pulse; he quickly hops on his telephone, in a position to enact the subsequent segment in his plan: Wyatt works for an especially robust record company, Mega Records, a gigantic document corporate which performs a main role of controlling the movements of the younger client.
By the time the film's titular trio is introduced, the viewer is quickly aware Josie and her bandmates Valarie (Rosario Dawson) and Melody (Tara Reid), don't seem to be intended to stick confined to playing in their garage eternally; the gals from the small the city of Riverdale have guitars on their backs and the glimmer of success in their eyes with the made up our minds power to seem toward the future. After Wyatt witnesses the trio enjoying on the boulevard, he immediately starts putting plans for the workforce's pivot to superstardom into motion, much to Josie's (Rachel Leigh Cook) split-second hypothesis.
The 'Secret' Behind Clawing To Superstardom
Josie and the gang try their highest to ignore their respective interior voices permitting them to know Wyatt's intentions may not be so 'purrfect' after all; the band is all at once catapulted to rapid repute as their first single is planted firmly on most sensible of the charts, and Josie, Mel, and Val must try to make sense of their new identities as the biggest band in a global fueled by way of dressmaker labels, which might potentially be destroyed by means of Wyatt, his partner Fiona, and Carson Daley all in a moment's understand.
There are a number of instances in Josie and the Pussycats critically acclaimed soundtrack the place the reputedly endless string of company trademarks appear to overwhelm the overall tone of the film, but the all-consuming urge to devour a Big Mac whilst humming songs from the movie is precisely what Josie And The Pussycats wants the viewer to feel.
The film was once released in April 2001, an era ruled by means of boy bands and Britney Spears, pop tune, and the almighty buck; tune enthusiasts had been still regularly consuming track bodily, and the creation of the music file-sharing website Napster, a few years previous, become a cultural phenomenon. Record retailer chains had been nonetheless thriving and simple to search out, and youths were still placing out at and purchasing issues at shopping malls. The lens of 'Josie' knew exactly what it was zooming in on; consumerism revolved and cycled thru popular culture at break-neck velocity, making it appear to be a victory when a shopper used to be in a position to "keep up."
Critics, however, didn't seem to be "in" on the joke. Josie and the Pussycats did not have its shining second at the box place of business Melody Valentine would have hoped for. One of the maximum commonplace criticisms of the movie was that it oversaturated product placement; to the level the place the film's meant tongue-in-cheek stance against firms used to be overshadowed by means of the countless number of trademarks used in the film. The amount of backlash Josie and the Pussycats received was once so sturdy, the movie's administrators and co-writers Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, sponsored away from the film trade. The duo additionally felt discouraged by way of the film's promotional target market being a little too younger to get the movie's underlying message.
For some, the smirk within Josie and the Pussycats is more visible than it is to others. The inclusion of the tune Money written by way of Berry Gordy in the Fifties on the movie's soundtrack, and the reputedly all-knowing smirk of Letters To Cleo vocalist Kay Hanley (who provided the lead vocals for Josie), present on many of the songs, gave fanatics an additional nudge toward uncovering the movie's extraordinarily sturdy sense of self-awareness.
Amid the sea of product placement and coffee slivers of self-deprecation, the film by no means loses its sunny sense of optimism, which might serve as foreshadowing for Josie And The Pussycats' cult good fortune afterward. Renewed passion in the movie was sparked by way of the soundtrack's first-time unencumber on vinyl, ushering in a wave of dialog about Josie and the Pussycats' significance in pop culture in an era prior to nostalgia and mirrored image have been 'purred upon,' and shoppers were as desperate to flaunt their monetary statuses like one of the film's villains Alexandria Cabot was once all-too-excited to tell Josie's managers she deserved to return along on a trade trip because she was "in the comic book!"
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