Josie & the Pussycats

If you were to take Spice World (featuring the Spice Girls), remove all the self-deprecation, the homages to A Hard Day's Night, and the surprising wit that made it such a great guilty pleasure, what you'd be left with would closely resemble this undercooked movie--although the results would still be less formulaic. A live-action revival of the girlie rock band from the Archie comics and Saturday morning cartoons, "Josie" is a hypocritical satire of MTV conformity that carefully tippy-toes around its mockery of the fickle pop music market so as not to rock the boat with its target audience--those very same conformist teenagers at whom it pokes fun. The music is catchy and the girls (Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid and Rosario Dawson) look great, but the film is plagued by uninspired filmmaking, and weakened by an all but worthless giant conspiracy plot, lame running gags, and the most trite, simplistic themes imaginable. Not a necessary purchase. (R. Blackwelder)