“Lame.” “Off-putting.” “Spectacularly bad.”Movie critics were not kind to “Josie and the Pussycats” when it came out in 2001. Even so, audiences responded about as enthusiastically as reviewers, with “Josie” earning back less than half of its reported $39 million production budget, according to Box Office Mojo. The failure “took us out of the movie industry,” Deborah Kaplan, who directed along with Harry Elfont, recently told BuzzFeed News. Yet “Josie and the Pussycats” quietly stuck around. It’s wild.”For all its expertly rendered cynicism about the business of music, “Josie” is deeply earnest about music itself — about the drive to make it as well as the love that fans feel for it.

Source: Los Angeles Times September 25, 2017 12:00 UTC