Jem and the Holograms

JEM is overall a valiant effort to bring back a classic 80's cartoon into the 21st century in this real life film. In short, JEM was the female counterpart to Transformers & GI-JOE. Therefore, some sort of new development was expected to follow as it did for the others.

Although the movie is certainly well produced, it contains a number of flaws that emanate mostly from the difficulties in introducing a 30 year old cartoon to a completely new generation.

The first problem with JEM is simply that its some 20 to 30 years too late. JEM was created in the 80's, era of Guns & Roses, Def Leppard, etc... where glamour rock & punk rock came together in a way. Today, the heavy makeup and outrageous styling already feel dated and out of place. So the very first thing I feel stands out is the outfits & personas of the band.

The second issue has to do with how the movie was developed itself making very faint reliance on the "'Holograms", Synergy and CGI/AI. Basically the sci-fi component of the series was mostly absent. Add to that the complete absence of a counterpart antagonist which was played by the Misfits in the original series and you have something that doesn't replicate or come close the sense of the original series (the misfits actually come in at the very very end of the movie when its finished!) It's too bad cause the misfits led by Kesha seem like pretty cool characters.

At this point, it's far from certain that a follow up will happen but the setup make it likely much better than the first.