As if you didn't see this coming from the first time you saw the purple leopard skin teaser poster, Josie and the Pussycats is 2001's first contender for the prestigious yet invariably never actually awarded...

It takes a lot of skill to take one of the few fond memories of my childhood that the alcoholism hasn't erased, whore it out into a major motion picture, and pull it off without making me cringe.

The Grinch failed. Jumanji failed. Inspector Gadget failed.

It takes a steady hand and a keen sense of balance to take something that was beloved by the youths of the bicentennial and keep it true to itself, yet modernize it to the point of not turning the whole gag into another The Brady Bunch Movie type anachronism. That's why I was a little leery about the concept of a Josie movie.

You can keep your Clue Clubs and your Jabberjaws, when a neurotic six-year-old like me has to budget in a little time to watch cartoons between playing WKRP reporter and huffing rubbing alcohol left carelessly under the bathroom sink, Josie and the Pussycats is where it's at.

I tried to convince my friends to all dress up as Josie and the Pussycats last Halloween. I wanted to be Alexander Cabot III. I was vetoed four to one.

Of course, I was always a bigger fan of the "in outer space" variety of Josie myself. Sure the plot was exactly the same in every single episode of both series, but there's just something that melts inside me when I see a hostile alien race lay down their arms and start grooving to the musical stylings of "Inside, Outside, Upside Down" before Alan M. smashes them into submission with his bare hands.

Ever since I first learned that a Josie movie was in production, I wondered to myself, "How are they going to convert the contrived Hanna-Barbera cartoon plot that seems labored in a twenty-two minute format into a full movie?" Oh wait. Sorry, that's what I've been thinking about the live action Scooby Doo movie.

Through my secret inside man at Universal Pictures (who shall be known only as "Lori"), I actually had a script for Josie in my hands six months ago. Oooh, very impressive. Can you imagine the security that must have had to come through? Getting dirt on the next Star Wars movie, hell, my cat could sneak that kind of info off the lot, but the Josie script? People have died for less.

Anyway, from my first rifling through of those red, unxeroxable pages, I knew this movie was going to be a megahit. My associates scoffed. I thought it would rule. They thought it would suck.

"It's like the place where Spice World meets Rocky and Bullwinkle," I said.

"Exactly," they replied.

As the months wore on, and the publicity for the movie went from a trickle to an all out downpour, my excitement level rose like an American submarine under a Japanese fishing vessel.

Regardless of how much I personally loved the old cartoon, and regardless of the fact that the rotoscoped title animation of Melody's creamy white legs pumping the bass drum pedal initiated my first puzzling biological forays into manhood, that still doesn't mean that the show was ever good. Let's face it, my seal of approval may as well be the litmus test for what sucks.

In their movie adaptation, Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan (my favorite writing duo, and the masterminds behind Can't Hardly Wait and Viva Rock Vegas) take what was fill-in-the-blanks screenwriting at its worst and turned it into a brilliant and biting satire of the teen pop landscape.

Their treatment of the characters was top notch. In the TV show, Josie was a vacant-eyed redhead whose greatest character defining characteristic was that she was the one that Alan M. liked. Whoop de vanilla.

Oh, and Valerie was the smart black one, Melody was the dumb blonde one, Alan M. was the hot one, Alexander was the coward, and Alexandera was the bitch. That's it. The show ran for four years, and that's the incredible depth of the character development.

I remember even as a kid thinking that Alan M. should ditch that drab, boring Josie and hook up with Alexandra. She wanted him hardcore. What did Josie ever do for him? He must have a serious henna-head fetish. I mean, sure Alexandra was a selfish and destructive saboteur, but at least sabotage is personality. Plus she looked exactly like Josie with a different haircut anyway. And Melody for that matter. Hell, she could be any female character that was ever designed by Archie comics. Put a hat on her and she's Veronica. Rrrrowww.

In the movie, Elfont and Kaplan manage to take these two dimensional cores of '70s camp cartoon character-by-number, and polish and realign them with an aughties flair. Instead of being just the featureless redhead bandleader, Josie has the mad skillz, but also insecurities and fears. Yet at the same time, she retains her giant, vacant stare through the perfect casting of the Rachel Leigh Cook. One peculiar character enhancement was that Josie picked up the mechanical prowess of the group, which has always belonged to Valerie, allowing her to have a valuable niche in the band besides "token black character."

Instead of being a simpering coward, Alexander is a fast talking trend whore. Instead of being a beefpile, Alan M. (Described as "The hottest guy in Riverdale") is a powderpuff pop version of Beck. Instead of being a "bitch," Alexandra has "attitude."

And in the weirdest successful pairing since french fries dipped in strawberry milkshakes, somehow the writing team managed to take this cast of refurbished factory rejects and their standardized "victory through rock and roll" plotline and weave them into a hilarious and contemporary slam against the marketing machine built to suck down teenagers' all too disposable income.

In the '70s the supervillain wanted to rule the world. Today the supervillain wants to buy it. It all still works.

I've actually seen pre-reviews of this movie in LA papers that criticize Josie for excessive product placement. Uh huh. I wonder if these same reviewers criticized Saving Private Ryan for portraying war as "violent," or panned Scary Movie for "not being scary enough."

In the infomercial dystopia of Josie's world, advertising has permeated every facet of life to the point of hilarity. From the America Online Hotel, to the Golden Arches fencing off the front of Manhattan island, to the boxes of Bounce fabric softener stuck to the walls of the airplane for no apparent reason, just when you think they can't stack another single sponsor onto the screen, they do it tenfold.

I wonder who, exactly, this film is targeted toward. I mean, people of my demographic are pretty much "in the zone" to appreciate the satire, but I think in its entire domestic run, this movie will be seen by about seven of us.

The teenage and "tweenage" audience the publicity is targeting seem unlikely to realize that they are being mocked, and most certainly will have no nostalgic attraction to a show that predates their own birth by more than a decade. They may as well make a Gen-X comedy about how much extreme sports suck, licensed around Petticoat Junction.

You owe it to yourself to get out this weekend and see Josie and the Pussycats. Elfont and Kaplan have done me proud with their live action modernization of the world's coolest cartoon girl band. Now if they would only get to work on a Jem and the Holograms adaptation...