Josie and the Pussycats ★★★★☆

Interesting to compare this to Legally Blonde, a film from the same year that was much more successful, more fondly remembered, and which I found much more lacking on rewatch. Legally Blonde does have some very memorably and quotable bits, but I found Josie and the Pussycats had a lot more energy, a lot more laughs, and just a lot more fun. They are both of their time but Legally Blonde only puts me back into thinking “Oh yes, this is how Hollywood films and stereotypes were in the early 2000s,” Josie and the Pussycats puts one back into an over the top version of the music and consumer culture at the time, overlaid with absolutely obscene product placement.

It’s kind of a great encapsulation of capitalist recuperation. A genuinely fun film about the evils of consumerism and advertising, utterly plastered with completely genuine product placement that both sells and undermines its own message because Evian doesn’t care about how it’s being made fun of with the grotesque spectacle of the Evian-sponsored aquarium because you are still getting to see a giant Evian logo plastered over your screen for an entire scene. Buy a fucking Dreamcast.