Jem and the Holograms

A terrible Teen Girl Wish Fulfilment (tm) movie that lacks the kitschy charm of the cartoon. Doesn't even qualify as a guilty pleasure. Avoid.

A really bizarre and total misfire, so tonally dissonant from scene to scene, all candy-coated MTV one second then dour the next and then literal science fiction the next, with none of the elements quite working at all. It's awkward how the movie suddenly realizes it needs a conflict in the last half hour, trumps up some family drama, then discards it after a couple scenes. The movie needed to be both shorter and also have more performing scenes.

I actually watched the original Jem (1985-1988) cartoons a lot when I was a kid. It had one piece of damaged impact on me. Whenever I hear the words The Misfits, it's Jem's rival girl band I think of! And the 2015 film Jem and the Holograms (2015) omit the only great thing about it's source material. They left out The Misfits in hope of following up with a sequel. Instead this becomes a poor excuse for a "believe in yourself" teen movie. EPIC FAIL!

Exactly how you SHOULDN'T make a JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS movie. It's not even any fun, with dour story elements about dead dads, foreclosed houses, and mysterious wills. My 8-year-old daughter was all pumped for this thing based on the previews; she went to sleep an hour into it. The fucking SONGS aren't even catchy.

Based on the popular 1980s cartoon, this musical movie, quite frankly, doesn't really leave me wanting to sing its praise. The updated-for-the-social-media-generation script is oddly uneven, sometimes feeling like it was cribbed a little too directly from that old cartoon. The story is packed with one-dimensional characters, illogical situations and unexplained plot holes. (pluggedin.com)

A young girl (Aubrey Peeples) becomes an internet star after a video of her singing is posted to YouTube; fame beckons in the person of a slick promoter (Juliette Lewis), but she must choose between fame and her family, her sisters being her back-up band. Oh, and there's something about a robot. A popular 80s cartoon series is here adapted into a thuddingly generic film, ironic given that it purports to be a paean to individuality. The actors, Lewis especially, mostly seem embarrassed.

Top badass moment? Aubrey Peeples IS Alanis Morissette. I was ready to hate this film and its endless McGuffins, whilst it quietly ignored loads of other stuff that wasn't so convenient. But it looks nice, and the sensory overload from being bombarded with nonstop, positive vibes and messaging was like being brainwashed. In the end I was overwhelmed by the onslaught. Erica Raymond was actually fun, whilst watching Universal out-Disney Disney was educational. No cats, chainsaws or decapitations.

When you make "Dragon Ball Evolution" look like a more faithful adaptation, you screw up royally.

Another of those films that is nothing like the thing it's based on outside of the most basic. It doesn't pull you in for the story and characters it offers, and all the while you're wondering why it's nothing like the cartoon of the same name.

There's some genuinely gorgeous scenes and a lot of really stupid shit. I have no attachment to the TV but I did laugh reading that the makers of the movie got fans to make videos about how much the TV show meant to them and just used it in this movie without telling them

For a movie based on a fun, pastel blast of a tv show they sure made this dour as hell. You can make a movie have an emotional bent and payoff without sucking the fun out of everything. A few scenes shine, but that's about it.

The girls were all right looking... And the girls had good voices

I expected nothing of this but I actually loved it. There are some pretty big, consistent flaws, poor pacing, off-beat editing, bad lip-syncing, but it's the kind of film that just charmed me so much that I couldn't care less. Visually enjoyable, and once it kicks off it really does feel like an 80s cartoon (give or take a lot of social network-references).

awesome singing and dancing movie 10 out of 10