Josie and the Pussycats is the new Spice World. It’s totally ridiculous, but I kinda liked it. Josie and the Pussycats were originally created by Archie Comics in 1963. Gaining even more popularity as a Hanna-Barbera Saturday-morning cartoon in the early 70’s. When Sabrina the Teenage Witch became popular as a live action TV series in the 90’s, they decided to make a live action Josie and the Pussycats movie in 2001. Although I was introduced to an all-black version of the band through their scattered appearances on Riverdale, I knew I needed to see the movie one day. The movie is a lot more comic accurate with Josie McCoy as the level headed redhead guitarist, Melody Valentine as the dumb blonde drummer, and Valerie Brown as the outspoken black bassist. All three actresses were well known at the time and perfect for their part.
After making her biggest impression in She’s All That, Rachael Leigh Cook learned to sing and play guitar just to play Josie. After her notable role in American Pie, Tara Reid stole the show with all of Mel’s airheaded thoughts. Rosario Dawson wasn’t a household name just yet, but Val was her first of many comic book roles. Other important comic characters include Gabriel Mann as Josie’s less than muscular love interest Alan M. Mayberry, Paul Costanzo as their pathetic band manager Alexander Cabot, and a skunk haired Missi Pyle as his meddling sister Alexandra. Together the Pussycats go through the usual rise to fame and jealousy when Josie is given top-billing. It sounds cliché, but Josie and the Pussycats is way more clever than it seems on the surface.
For whatever reason, the fictional band is used to satirize the music industry and heavy commercialization. Subliminal messages are used by an evil record label in an effort to sell things to the youth of America. So the extreme product placement is all very deliberate. Alan Cumming and Parker Posey are perfectly hammy villains who sell the insane premise. Donald Faison, Seth Green, and Breckin Meyer make up a stereotypical boy band called Du Jour that gets booted out when they ask too many questions. Josie and the Pussycats is filled with catchy music, but everything does lead to a catfight. Let’s just say Archie Comics wasn’t exactly happy about the PG-13 language and sexuality (little did they know). Despite bombing at the box-office, Josie and the Pussycats has a cult following for a reason.
Josie and the Pussycats
Master Mix Movies 
I remember seeing reruns of the 1960’s-1970’s series on Cartoon Network back in the 90’s (back when it still had good programming) and thought it was interesting. The movie version was just OK I thought, not as good as Spice World, but not terrible either. Alan Cumming is an underrated actor in my opinion, good at comedy and drama equally.
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It is interesting that Alan Cumming was in both movies.
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Yes, I remember reading about Josie and The Pussycats in the Archie comic books of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
I remember there was one branch of the Calgary Public Library where you could take out comic books on loan.
So I took out an Archie comic book back in 2017.
It was all about a zombie 🧟♀️ apocalypse destroying Riverdale.
The last human survivor was Dilton Doiley who ends up getting eaten by all the other zombie 🧟♀️ residents of Riverdale.
Archie Comics seem to have grown considerably darker in tone than when I was a kid.
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They sure have gotten darker, but Riverdale does have its silly moments.
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