Why not show us the struggle of being authentic enough to win over fans, yet special enough that you do what so many others can’t? The movie compresses her upward journey into mere minutes, erring far on the side of escapism.
There is a brief joke about not reading the comments, but for the most part Jerrica’s internet fame is untroubled: She goes viral on YouTube, trends on Twitter and-bam!-she’s being offered more money than she knows what to do with. (The subsequent fight scenes made for great Hasbro toy crossovers.) The filmmakers really missed an opportunity to translate that conflict almost seamlessly into today’s kind of defense you would need an alter ego for: internet trolls.
Instead, we’re going solely for metaphors.Ī major reason Jem uses the holograms is to protect herself and the band from all manner of bad guys. The Jem of cartoons hides behind a literal hologram I never watched the original series, but I would have to guess that she suffers much more of a secret identity crisis than does a girl from the Valley. I’m not saying it’s a bad message to match up to the franchise, but bafflingly the filmmakers removed the aspect of the story that would best demonstrate this lesson. Compounding that dilemma is that Jerrica finds her enigmatic Jem persona taking over her life in a matter of days: “In a world where everything is public,” a smirking Erica tells a press conference, “this is the first real mystery of our age.” Jerrica gets the anonymity she wanted, but in the process, Jerrica may cease to exist. What follows is a pretty typical band story with an emphasis on the most desired member grappling with whether to strike out on her own. That’s when Erica Raymond (Juliette Lewis) reaches out with a record contract that will more than pay for Aunt Bailey to keep the house and prevent the girls from getting torn apart by the foster care system. Playing around with old costumes, and the anonymity they provide, leads to Jerrica recording one of her original songs as “Jem.” It’s a tired trope, the genius songwriter blessed with a gorgeous voice but crippled by stage fright, but what makes this vaguely interesting is that Kimber uploads Jerrica’s video to YouTube without her knowing… only for Jem to go viral in a matter of hours.
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