HomeMovie ReviewsThe Cap'n vs Jem - Truly, Truly, Truly Pissed!

The Cap’n vs Jem – Truly, Truly, Truly Pissed!

-

Jem-and-the-Holograms-movie-reviewThe Captain takes a look at Jem and the Holograms. Here’s a bit of what he thought, and fyi, he’s angry:

But seriously, how do you adapt this?

I mean, at one point in the show The Misfits storm into a room riding motorcycles shaped like giant guitars. If it were me, I’d go the Moonbeam City route and make it extremely 80’s, yet have this bizarre sci-fi element to it. Because that’s what the series was. It was Moonbeam City if Moonbeam City was for kids. Hell, even one of the Misfits band members is named Pizzazz.

I want neon colors, big shoulder pads and crazy outfits. Nowadays crazy outfit means some stupid shit Lady Gaga puts on her head. So of course what we got in the film was just that. Stupid Lady Gaga outfits with crazy shit on their heads.

This is a musical kind of, so at least that is good, right? No! You are wrong. And stop asking stupid questions. The music is the worst part. But to be fair, the music from the tv series is also terrible so nothing has really changed there. I have no idea if they tried doing a modern take on any of the show’s songs or just tried doing original works. From the film, Jem’s big hit is a crappy song called Young Blood. It just sounds like any other generic pop song you’d hear these days on the Disney channel.

So you take away the Misfits, what else is there to this story? Nothing. It is 2 hours of nothing happening. It is so damn boring. To make things worse, the film is frequently splicing in random youtube videos of people dancing. People singing. People talking about how much they love Jem. People making music… it just never ends and it is damn insufferable. At one point during the end they keep cutting to youtube videos of assholes dance stomping and hamboning, which if you didn’t know, is just slapping your hands and other body parts together to sort of make a rhythmic sound. It’s like if in Pitch Perfect 2 they kept cutting to all the youtube videos there are of people imitating the cups song from the first film.

Instead of a pop idol star making machine like in the tv series, we get a broken down robot that looks like the robot from Earth to Echo. Hell, this movie feels so cheap it might actually be a left over prop from that film. I don’t really even know why this robot Synergy is still in the film. It seems so out of place. The only thing I could think of is this was due to the outcry when the first teaser trailer leaked. Fans wanted their Synergy, so they did some reshoots and farted it into the plot. I’m sure I’m wrong about that, but it feels so last minute and half-baked that I wouldn’t be surprised.

So characters! If the film doesn’t have a plot, it should at least have interesting characters, right? What the hell did I tell you about asking stupid fucking questions?

Jerrica is Jem. The reason for the persona is she is shy. Not that she had to trick people like in the tv series. Also in the series, her father owned a record company but when he died it was left half to her and the other half to some evil asshole who is played by Juliette Lewis in the film. Who I’m sure is either drunk or high on coke throughout most of this.

Want more helpful screenwriting tips and movie/script reviews? Follow this link to our Discussion Forum.

And be sure to check out our Notes Service, where I give my detailed thoughts and suggestions on your script.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Must Read

Blood and Fire

3
Hank here. This is my first REQUESTED review from Amazon Studios which I'm excited about. *Sidenote* Thanks to Lauri for taking my review in stride, and...

Sawtooth

The Bad News First

WallyWorld