Josie and the Pussycats

Josie and the Pussycats | |
| Director: | Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan |
| Cast: | Racheal Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson, Tara Reid, Alan Cumming, Parker Posey |
| Genre: | Film, Comedy |
In a clever postmodern paradox, this film celebrates exactly what it purports to critique: mass-media-inspired consumerism. Josie and the Pussycats is loosely based on the '70s TV cartoon series in which Josie and her band solved mysteries. In the movie, Josie (Racheal Leigh Cook) and her band mates Valerie (Rosario Dawson) and Melody (Tara Reid) are suddenly signed by the major label MegaRecords. Unbeknownst to the band, the label is using the music to transmit subliminal messages to brainwash teenagers into buying everything from CDs to Puma sneakers to Big Macs. Evil masterminds Wyatt (Alan Cumming) and Fiona (a ridiculous Parker Posey) are behind the scheme to make the first Josie and the Pussycats concert the biggest brainwashing event ever, but the band finds out and fights back in the name of free thinking. The movie is packed solid with real corporate logos, and what I would like to know is whether Starbucks, Kodak, Target, etc. paid the filmmakers to show their logos, or if the filmmakers paid the corporations for the rights to use them, or whether they just called it even.