Is there an award for “worst cash-in?” “Jem and the Holograms” was a relatively obscure Saturday morning cartoon in the mid- to late- 1980s about a lead singer and her bandmates. I’ve read through the Wikipedia entry twice now and that’s as far as my understanding has breached. I imagined this cartoon appealed to American tweener girls into pink and bubble gum pop. Of course, if you were a tween when it first aired, you are forty now. Next up, what do you say we try and cash in on the popularity of “Hong Kong Phooey”,”Jabberjaw”, or Fawn Hall?
Now, for a movie based on a dated cartoon that regarded the color pink as a higher calling, Jem and the Holograms could have been a lot worse. Jerrica (Aubrey Peeples) and sister Kimber (Stefanie Scott) lost their parents years ago. Sucks. The loss of mom doesn’t seem to bug anybody, but Jem is still haunted by memories of her dad (Barnaby Carpenter). After dad’s death, the girls moved in with Aunt Bailey (Molly Ringwald, no shit! She still looks good) and her ethnically diverse daughters Aja (Hayley Kiyoko) and Shana (Aurora Perrineau) and together they are WYLD STALLYNS!
Well, actually, they don’t know they’re a group yet; they’re all just a talented bunch of misfits with G-Rated problems. “Oh no, Aja made my sweater into leg warmers!” Yeah, yeah, call me when somebody has a drug problem. Jerrican’t tends to bail on band practice. She’s too shy. I say “band practice,” but there seems no effort to consider themselves a band; it’s three girls in a garage playing somgs they’ve written, which granted, sounds like a band … practicing. But for them, it’s just fooling around. “C’mon Jerrica, everybody’s doing it.” Jerrica, of course, does the most logical thing under the circumstances – she assumes the personality “Jem,” dons a pink wig, applies David Bowie makeup, and tapes her solo act. Kimber says she’s going to delete it, but instead uploads it to youtube. Oh, that Kimber.
Jem’s musical oxymoron “Alone Together” isn’t exactly “That Thing You Do” and yet it gets six billion hits overnight or whatever as these things always do in movies. This attracts the attention of media mogul 
Erica Raymond (Juliette Lewis) who signs Jem on the spot and accepts her sisters are her band sight unseen, sound unheard. With the media wolfpack baying at Erica’s feet, “Jem” becomes an overnight success. For this, of course, Erica is presented as the villain.
And then there is Synergy, a broken uniwheel robot doll dad project Jerrica kept for sentimental reasons … turns out, not broken and requires some key components hidden in public places to download new Jem achievements. I’d criticize, but the hunt for Jem October became the best part of the film. Finding plot holes in Jem and the Holograms is like finding a timepiece in Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory – let’s skip straight to the things that the film should have addressed: Jem falls in love with, quite literally, the first guy she meets in El Lay (wow, you’re easy) … I’d be hard-pressed to find a band creation film that took the the music more for granted. This group spends hours upon hours upon hours on its look and maybe 15 minutes on the music …Synergy’s components are hidden in public places that restrict admission at night but are open during the day; assuming these components could remain hidden, why search for them when it is illegal to do so?
The secret of Jem is her [spooky voice]mystery[/spooky voice]. Erica extorts that piece of Jerrica to hold leverage (see – anybody can be “Jem” because she’s always in disguise); as well as a strict divergence from the concern that the subject is, in fact, talented, this has to be the shortest time period in history between “we just got famous” and “we need to split up” in music history. Well, let’s face it: there’s nothing about this film that’s historical … or hysterical.
♪Jemmie and her sisters three
Got their fifteen instantly
Music biz integrity
In disguise, can’t go wrong
Doesn’t matter
What the song
Any, any♫
Rated PG, 118 Minutes
D: Jon M. Chu
W: Ryan Landels
Genre: Pilot for show that won’t last a season
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Did you live in Botswana and play mock-Jem concerts for the neighbours?
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The pink challenged
♪ Parody inspired by “Josie and the Pussycats”
