Josie is 'Girl Power in full flower'

Call it a blast from the past. Josie, Melody and Val started as jazzy teen characters in the Archie Comics of the 1960s, and continued as animated up-tempo girls in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon series in the '70s.

Now they have their own made-in-Vancouver movie, the sassy, sexy and funny Josie And The Pussycats. Half teen romantic comedy, half satire and all high-octane energy, the movie turns our teen heroines into rock music superstars.

The trio is discovered in Riverdale by an unscrupulous manager (Alan Cumming) who brings them to New York and makes them the biggest thing in music in a single week.

The girls -- three girlie archetypes (or Archie-types) enthusiastically played by Rachel Leigh Cook, Tara Reid and Rosario Dawson -- are naive about what is really going on.

It turns out the manager is a front for a psycho-villain (played by free spirit Parker Posey) who is manipulating the youth of the world by planting subliminal messages in the music of the bands they groom for stardom. As soon as the band members begin to suspect, they are killed off and replaced with fresh faces -- like Josie and her two pals.

So Josie And The Pussycats plays out like an Austin Powers movie -- a cartoonish version of a suspense thriller where the heroes are in jeopardy long before they know it.

At the same time, co-writers and co-directors Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont (Can't Hardly Wait) juice up the movie as a satire of product placements, excessive consumerism, teen fadism and media manipulation.

For example, when our heroines fly into New York, a burger outlet's golden arches tower over Manhattan. At an aquarium, the shark tank is sponsored by a French fresh water spring. And so on, ad nauseam. Never in the history of movies have so many products been placed with such enthusiasm -- all in the name of satire.

Of course, that is where the highly stylized Josie And The Pussycats weakens its case. It becomes what it is satirizing -- a blatant case of label boosterism. The joke is on the audience as much as it is on the companies involved.

Yet Josie really is a good youth flick. It's fun and bursts with irony at times. But it could have been better if the cartoon element had been pushed to greater extremes and the ironic tone maintained throughout. That would have solved the consumerism issue and given the dull spots some zing.

The movie rocks with good humour and strong music, much of it given shape by record producer Babyface. With the Pussycats back and the joint jumpin', Girl Power is in full flower. (More on Josie And The Pussycats)

MANY LIVES OF JOSIE

Originally a spinoff from Archie comics, the (barely) animated adventures of Josie And The Pussycats ran on Saturday mornings on CBS from 1970 to 1972.

The Hanna-Barbera half-hour featured the voices of Janet Waldo (lead singer Josie McCoy), Jackie Joseph (dumb blonde Melody Valentine) and Barbara Pariot (brainy Valerie Brown) as the funky feline singing group, with future Charlie's Angel Cheryl Ladd subbing as Melody's singing voice.

Former Mouseketeer Sherry Alberoni provided the voice of catty troublemaker Alexandra Cabot, who was always trying to steal Josie's muscle-bound roadie/boyfriend Allen. Casey Kasem, who also worked on Scooby Doo, played Alexandra's weasel-like brother Alexander, the inept, scarf-wearing manager of the group.

The series was (barely) revived two years later as Josie And The Pussycats In Outer Space.

-- Bill Brioux