Plot
Wyatt Frame is a record executive working for record label MegaRecords. The label, headed by the trendy and scheming Fiona, pumps out pop bands and, through an arrangement with the United States government, get teens to buy their records and follow "a new trend every week" by putting subliminal messages under the music. The Government's motive in the scheme is to help build a robust economy from the "wads of cash" teenagers earn from babysitting and minimum wage jobs. When a member of Wyatt's wildly successful boy band, Du Jour, uncovers one such message and asks Wyatt about it aboard their private jet, Wyatt parachutes out with the pilot, leaving the plane to crash and apparently killing Du Jour.
Wyatt lands just outside the town of Riverdale, and bumps into an unappreciated rock band — the Pussycats, made up of three working class young ladies: vocalist/guitarist Josie McCoy, drummer Melody Valentine, and bassist/backup vocalist Valerie Brown. As the Pussycats are struggling financially, they accept Wyatt's offer to a lucrative record deal despite its implausibility. They are flown to New York City where they are renamed "Josie and the Pussycats", much to the girls' discomfort. All goes well and their first single climbs rapidly to the top of the charts, but Valerie grows increasingly frustrated that all media attention is focused on Josie (who is advertised as the group's poster girl) rather than the band as a whole. Melody, too simple to notice the undue attention Josie receives, uses her uncanny behavioral perception and becomes suspicious of Fiona and Wyatt.
Due to Valerie and Melody's suspicions, Fiona orders Wyatt to kill them; he attempts to do so by sending them without Josie on a fake "appearance" on a badly faked set for the MTV show Total Request Live, in which an obviously fake Carson Daly impersonator and the real Carson Daly assault them with baseball bats (the girls survive due to their attackers' incompetence). Meanwhile, Josie plans to attend a gig at a bar by Alan M, a fellow musician and Josie's childhood sweetheart, but Wyatt deceives her by telling her it was canceled. Instead, Josie listens to a new remix of their latest single, and is brainwashed by subliminal messages into desiring a solo career and seeing Valerie and Melody as impediments. After an argument with her bandmates, Josie realizes that the music influenced the fight. Her suspicions are confirmed when she uses a mixing board to make the subliminal track audible, but she is caught by Fiona.
MegaRecords have organized a giant pay-per-view concert, whereby they plan to unleash their biggest subliminal message scheme yet. They force Josie to perform on stage by threatening to kill Melody and Valerie. The badly injured members of Du Jour (who survived by successfully grounding the plane, but landed in the concert of the rival Metallica band and got severely beaten up by its fans) appear just in time to stop Wyatt and Fiona from completing their scheme. In the resulting fight, Josie destroys the machine used to make the messages. The message for the concert is revealed not to promote the band, the label, or a corporate sponsor, but to make Fiona popular. Fiona suffers a breakdown and reveals that she had been an outcast in high school who spoke with a lisp. Wyatt reveals that his appearance is a disguise — that he went to the same high school as Fiona, but was a persecuted and unpopular albino nicknamed "White-Ass Wally". Fiona and Wyatt fall in love. The government agents (shown earlier in collusion with Fiona) arrive; because the conspiracy is exposed, and the government has decided that movies provide a better channel for subliminal messages (breaking the fourth wall with their own subliminal message promoting the film and the U.S. Army), the agents arrest Fiona and Wyatt as scapegoats to cover-up the government's involvement in the failed scheme.
Josie, Valerie and Melody then proceed to perform the concert, and for the first time their fans are able to judge the band on its merits rather than be subliminally persuaded to like the band. Alan M comes to the concert and confess his love for Josie on stage, and she returns his feelings. The audience roars their approval as the film comes to a close.
Read more about this topic: Josie And The Pussycats (film)
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