Alphabetical Movie Blog – Josie and the Pussycats

I don’t think I would have ever seen Josie and the Pussycats had I not watched Mission to Mars.

Mission to Mars is a terrible film.  Beginning to end, it is some of the most painful filmmaking you are likely to see in a big budget film.  Yet I can’t deny that it resulted in one of the more enjoyable filmgoing experience I’ve ever had.

The movie was awful, yes, but I watched it with a group of about twenty people and after the film, we all went to dinner and made fun of it for two hours.  Our epic rant was quite possibly longer than the film itself.  Someone would have a french fry, cry out “and another thing…” and the roast would continue.

If I’d never seen the film, I would never have known that particular pleasure.

As is the case with most things you enjoy, the search was on for the next awful movie.

Problem is, it takes some real effort to make a movie as bad as Mission to Mars.  The movie can’t just be bad.  It has to be filled with terrible performances, terrible writing and terrible directing decisions.

I have lots of issues with Prometheus but I still think Michael Fassbender’s David is an amazing character.  I would go see another movie about that character.

If any of the characters from Mission to Mars turned up in another film, I’d consider it an indication that I should wait until it was streaming on Netflix.  And I was stoned.

The other problem is that there is always someone who likes the movie.  They sit in the corner meekly arguing all the finer points of the movie and suddenly you don’t feel like you are blasting plot holes in Battleship, you are blasting holes into your friend who has no taste.

Finding a movie that hit the Mission to Mars sweet spot was not easy but we kept at it.

And that’s why we went to see Josie and the Pussycats.

Because it looked awful.  The whole premise was idiotic from the start.  A movie about Josie and the Pussycats?  How could that even work?

As we sat down in the theatre, we were certain this was going to be the movie that usurped Mission to Mars during late night drunken movie bashing.

But something went wrong.

Our giddiness was replaced by a slowly dawning realization that the movie was actually pretty good.  Instead of laughing at the movie, we were laughing with the movie.

I remember looking around the theatre nervously.  Was I the only one who was enjoying myself?  What if the others were going to spend dinner laughing at the idiotic Du Jour when I thought the film’s send up of boy bands was pretty damned funny?

And I even thought the song “Back Door Lover,” while subversively funny, was also pretty catchy.

I needn’t have worried.  Everyone else was enjoying the film as much as me.

The movie was, of course, a complete flop.  You couldn’t escape the fact that it looked terrible.

And that goodness for that.  Because if it had only looked mediocre, we never would have gone.

Thanks, Mission to Mars!