Maybe my little sister would like it (if I had a little sister). Maybe she would like the Backstreet Boys, too. And Carson Daly from MTV. Alas, I haven’t that sweet little shnookums of a young protégée.

Anyway, Josie and the Pussycats have lived through the ’60s with a comic book series, the ’70s with a cartoon series, and are trying to transition into the next millennium with their new movie.

They have a different look now. And a different job. Lead singer Josie (Rachel Leigh Cook), bassist Val (Rosario Dawson) and Melody (Tara Reid) are best friends trying to make it to musical stardom. They dress more stylishly, but still hang on to their trademark pussy ears.

But the three members of the girl band get wrapped up in a corporate and political conspiracy to make discriminating teens into mindless consumers with brainwashing and subliminal messages. Maybe it’s not that unrealistic, and part of the fun is the over-exaggerated spoof of name brands and untalented musicians’ becoming overnight hits.

The Pussycats begin their rise to stardom when manager Wyatt Frame (Alan Cumming) from Mega Records "discovers" them at a stoplight. They find it a little odd when he wants to sign a contract for them without ever having heard their music, but they don’t want to miss their big break. So Frame drags them off with him to "Megatropolis" and showers them with fame and fortune. He even introduces them to Mega Records CEO Fiona (Parker Posey), who tries to get "in" with the girls, but really just creeps them out.

The girls try to keep their friendship intact, but Frame has ulterior motives, trying to eliminate any members who discover his conspiracy.

Every scene is chock full of advertisements, from McDonald’s to Revlon to Evian, and flaunts the latest fashion of those 20 seconds. The band itself is signed on before the manager even hears them, and they become stars in a week, feeding off of the fad of inflated fame for flops with a fashion sense.

There’s a lot of mocking of teenagers, and I’m sure if you were still 14 you’d get a lot of the inside jokes (like Carson Daly’s real-life fling with Tara Reid juxtaposed against his screen self trying to bash Melody the Pussycat’s brain with a bat). Or if you were 30 something, you might get the references to the original comic book series. But for us Gen-Xers or Gen-Yers, or whatever the hell we are, there’s just the movie’s blatant campy humor to get you through.

The music is good, but nothing spectacular. The makers had to create some decent music for the movie’s message to be at all worthwhile. N’Sync style songs couldn’t cut it for the film’s pseudo-alternative flare.

That spirit can be funny at times, but the adolescent messages of popularity and friendship get a bit trite and dominate the story. To give directors Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont a little credit, they do throw a hearty jab at consumerism.