Jem and the Holograms Aubrey Peeples, Stefanie Scott, Hayley Kiyoko. Directed by Jon M. Chu. Rated PG. Opens Friday.
The 1980s cartoon series Jem and the Holograms is, to put it mildly, extremely silly. Like many ’80s cartoons, it was designed primarily to sell toys, and its characters were not created with any kind of logic or internal consistency. That doesn’t mean that the show couldn’t make for an entertaining, clever movie, but it would take a lot more creativity and ambition than director Jon M. Chu and screenwriter Ryan Landels bring to their desultory live-action adaptation. Although fans have been up in arms about the lack of the cartoon’s signature elements in early trailers, if anything the film is too faithful to its source material, attempting to shoehorn many of the show’s ridiculous ideas and catch phrases into a mostly serious, straight-faced story about the perils of fame.
The cartoon’s Jem used her powerful, hologram-generating sentient computer Synergy to transform from spunky teen Jerrica Benton into glam rock star Jem, with her three best friends as her backing band the Holograms. The movie’s Jerrica (Nashville’s Aubrey Peeples) is a much more down-to-earth teen, who lives with her aunt (Molly Ringwald, possibly on board as some sort of ’80s talisman), her sister Kimber (Stefanie Scott) and her foster sisters Aja (Hayley Kiyoko) and Shana (Aurora Perrineau). When Jerrica posts a YouTube video of one of her original songs under the pseudonym Jem, she becomes an overnight viral sensation, and a target for greedy record executive Erica Raymond (Juliette Lewis, having way more fun than anyone else in the movie).
What follows is a predictable, drawn-out and cheesy story about remaining true to yourself in the face of pressures to sell out, as Jerrica must resist Erica’s encouragements to ditch her sisters and go solo, plus deal with the intensity of her newfound fame. It’s the stuff of anonymous Disney Channel movies, and it plays out with minimal style and no surprises. But the filmmakers also feel obligated to reinterpret the more fantastical elements of the TV series, so Jem ends up being a secret identity for Jerrica and not just a stage name, Erica goes from shady capitalist to Scooby-Doo-level villain, and Synergy gets a makeover as a cute little robot that looks like EVE from WALL-E.
The Synergy subplot, which takes up way too much time and amounts to almost nothing, is the movie’s biggest misstep, but aside from Lewis’ scenery-chewing performance, there isn’t much life to the rest of the movie, either. Chu, who directed Justin Bieber: Never Say Never and G.I. Joe: Retaliation, has experience with both teen pop and ’80s cartoon nostalgia, but he doesn’t serve either one very well here. Aside from some moody, elegant choreography in one of Jem’s musical performances (Chu also directed two Step Up movies), there’s nothing distinctive about the bland songs or the way they’re presented. Chu uses what appear to be real fan videos from social media to emphasize how meaningful Jem and her music are to fans (presumably these fans are actually talking about the animated Jem), but the songs themselves are so disposable and forgettable that it’s hard to imagine how they could mean anything to anyone.
No matter how many homemade videos Chu inserts (sometimes quite incongruously) into various scenes, the movie doesn’t end up with anything to say about social media or the way it creates and destroys stars. Nor does it present the goofy, garish animated characters in a fun or interesting new way. Nearly 15 years ago, the live-action version of Josie and the Pussycats took a similarly lightweight animated girl group and made their story into a fiendishly smart satire on consumer culture. The best that Jem and Holograms can manage is a campy mid-credits scene introducing evil rival band the Misfits, with a cameo from Kesha. That scene points to a potentially more entertaining (or at least more self-aware) sequel, but it’s hard to imagine audiences having enough interest in the preceding movie to warrant one.
