Josie and the Pussycats
Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid and Rosario Dawson as a struggling local band signed overnight by a label that hides subliminal messages in pop songs. It flopped in April 2001, with brand logos in nearly every scene and none of them paid for, and has since been reappraised as a cult satire.
Josie and the Pussycats was written and directed by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, the team behind Can't Hardly Wait, and based on both the Archie Comics series and the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Rachael Leigh Cook played Josie and Rosario Dawson played Valerie. Tara Reid, popular with the studio after American Pie, was cast as Melody without having to audition. Cook was surprised to get her part. "I cannot sing at all. I don't play guitar," she said later. Kay Hanley of Letters to Cleo provided Josie's singing voice while the three leads sang backup, and the actresses went through a "band camp" to learn their characters' instruments.
The plot is a conspiracy comedy. MegaRecords, run by Parker Posey's Fiona with Alan Cumming as her executive Wyatt Frame, works with the government to hide subliminal messages in pop music so that teenagers will buy trendy products. When the label's boy band, DuJour, notices a strange backing track on its single, the label needs a replacement and signs the Pussycats. As a running gag, the filmmakers put brand names in almost every scene, among them Target, Starbucks, Motorola, Revlon and America Online. None of it was paid placement.
Universal released the film in the United States on April 11, 2001, and it failed. Box Office Mojo lists a $4.6 million opening weekend and $14.3 million in domestic gross against a $39 million budget. Roger Ebert gave it half a star, and the Rotten Tomatoes consensus calls the product placement "rather hypocritical." Variety's Joe Leydon liked it and called it "intoxicatingly clever." The soundtrack did better. Released on March 27 with Babyface as executive producer of the songs, and with contributors including Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go's and Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, it reached No. 16 on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold.
The reappraisal took years. Elfont has said that Bono told Kaplan he loved the film within a year of its release, and that the two of them would say afterward, "Well, at least Bono got it." Critics have since praised it for satirizing product placement and the corporate music industry ahead of its time. In September 2017 a screening at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, with Hanley performing songs from the film, marked the soundtrack's first release on vinyl, from Mondo.
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