By now, you’ve probably heard that Universal’s big-screen adaptation of Jem and the Holograms wasn’t just a box-office bomb; it was a suitcase nuke of terrible marketing and moviegoer apathy that barely managed to cross the $1 million mark, making for one of the worst wide-release openings in film history. The Internet was awash in schadenfreude Monday morning—when isn’t it?—as fans of the gloriously weird ’80s cartoon, already primed to hate the movie after its decidedly un-Jem-like trailer dropped in May, reveled in its failure.
I think that’s a shame, because the movie is actually a lot of fun, if you can somehow manage to divorce it from its source material. It’s sweet and dopey and charming and positively awash in glitter and things that are pink. It’s not the movie Jem fans wanted; I know because I’m one of them, and I would’ve loved a live-action feature that was as bat-crap crazy as the show could be. Sign me up for the robot sharks and the friendly yetis and the guy who cheats on his girlfriend with his girlfriend in a holographic disguise—I loved it in 1985, and I love it now.
But that was never going to happen, even if director Jon M. Chu had been given more than $5 million to work with. Instead, he’s made a good-natured melodrama that wavers between winking camp and wide-eyed sincerity. Its setting is pointedly present day, with YouTube, Google Earth, and Snapchat figuring prominently in its gossamer-thin plot. But its glitter-and-glam visuals and weirdly dated portrayal of the music industry are all ’80s.
Ryan Landels’ often saccharine and occasionally zippy script is a standard-issue rags-to-riches story. (An immediate departure from the show’s arc, which was from riches to even more riches.) There’s not much by way of plot, but here goes: Aubrey Peeples stars as Jerrica Benton, a shy but talented suburban teenager who’s part of a tight-knit family that includes her younger sister, Kimber (Stefanie Scott), her Aunt Bailey (Molly Ringwald), and her two foster sisters, Aja (Hayley Kiyoko) and Shana (Aurora Perrineau). When a YouTube video of Jerrica performing a song she wrote goes viral, the girls are whisked off to Los Angeles and prepped for stardom by music mogul Erica Raymond (Juliette Lewis, who oozes malice and seems to have more fun than everyone else in the movie put together). There’s a weird subplot involving a robot—the film’s version of Synergy—and a scavenger hunt; some brief and tension-free conflict that sees Aunt Bailey in danger of losing the family home; a few flashy musical numbers; and an awesome mid-credits tease for a sequel that’s never going to happen. And then you get to go home.
Everything tells me I should’ve hated it, and I certainly went in thinking I would. But somehow—and, I suspect, completely by accident—it appealed to my undying nostalgia for ’80s pop culture. The look of it is partly responsible; the glitter and glamour departments are on point here, and if you like that sort of thing, Jem is worth seeing just for its vibrant, candy-store color palette and its New Wave-inspired makeup, wigs, and costumes. Whether or not it does so on purpose, it also taps into a specific kind of nostalgia by mimicking the cheese factor of teen-centric sitcoms from the ’80s and ’90s; some of its messaging is so heavy-handed, not to mention oft-repeated, that it makes Jessie Spano’s caffeine-pill freak-out seem subtle in comparison. It’s also loaded to the gills with nods to the show, so that’s something.
What ultimately makes it work for me, though, is its handling of the family dynamics at its center. As uneven and schmaltzy—and, yes, dumb—as this Jem can be, it still radiates warmth and positivity when it comes to how the girls relate to one another. Besides Erica’s delightfully campy brand of evil, there’s not an ounce of cattiness or spite on display. It’s a movie about girls helping women, women helping girls, and girls helping each other. It would have been more at home on the Disney Channel than in a multiplex, but it’s nice enough for what it is.
I wish someone had had the guts to make a faithful Jem movie, and that the filmmakers had enlisted the show’s original writer, Christy Marx, for more than a cameo. But as a minor exercise in glitz and girl power, you could do a lot worse.
April Snellings is a staff writer and project editor for Rue Morgue Magazine, which reaches more than 500,000 horror, thriller, and suspense fans across its media platforms. She recently joined the lineup of creators for Glass Eye Pix's acclaimed audio drama series Tales from Beyond the Pale, an Entertainment Weekly “Must List” pick that has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
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