Jem and the Holograms

Jon M Chu’s Jem and the Holo­grams begins with a series of makeshift musi­cal per­for­mances and yearn­ing video con­fes­sion­als tak­en from actu­al YouTube accounts. Togeth­er they form a mosa­ic of vir­tu­al expres­sion that con­nects the film’s ram­shackle nar­ra­tive with our col­lec­tive iden­ti­ty cri­sis in the social media age. Blurred lines are impor­tant to this neon-hued adap­ta­tion of the pop­u­lar 1980s tele­vi­sion car­toon, which depicts the rise and fall sto­ry of an overnight inter­net sen­sa­tion and her three band­mate sisters.

Instead of fear­ing dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, the film embraces it whole­heart­ed­ly. Dur­ing an ear­ly mono­logue to the cam­era, lead singer Jer­ri­ca (Aubrey Peeples) explains that the inter­net is her ​“clos­est friend.” Yet her younger sis­ter Kim­ber (Ste­fanie Scott) is the one who lives life vir­tu­al­ly, doc­u­ment­ing every sec­ond of the day on Face­book, Insta­gram, and the like. Long ago, the two were adopt­ed by their Aunt Bai­ly (Mol­ly Ring­wald), who was already rais­ing two fos­ter daugh­ters of her own, Shana (Auro­ra Per­rineau) and Aja (Haley Kiyoko).

Now teenagers, the sis­ters have dif­fer­ent inter­ests and atti­tudes but are still con­nect­ed by a strong famil­ial bond and sense of artis­tic free­dom. This close­ness is chal­lenged after Jer­ri­ca records a pow­er­ful per­for­mance as Jem, her alter ego who becomes a mys­te­ri­ous pop cul­ture phe­nom­e­non after the video goes viral. Hol­ly­wood comes call­ing in the form of a tena­cious and nasty pill of a music mogul named Eri­ca Ray­mond (Juli­ette Lewis), who woos the four­some with promis­es of for­tune and fame.

Jerrica’s self-aware voice-over nar­ra­tion com­mu­ni­cates Jem and the Holo­grams’ core themes. Her ongo­ing mono­logue tries to debunk the myth of female hys­te­ria while con­fronting the doubt inher­ent in hon­est artis­tic expres­sion. The ghost of her inven­tor father looms over the pro­ceed­ings, name­ly in the form of an uncom­plet­ed robot named ​“Syn­er­gy” that even­tu­al­ly leads Jer­ri­ca and com­pa­ny down a tan­gen­tial path of self-discovery.

If Chu can’t quite decide which genre or sto­ry to embrace – this ver­sion of Jem clum­si­ly mix­es rock opera, sci-fi and melo­dra­ma – he’s in bril­liant con­trol of cer­tain moments that merge new tech­nol­o­gy and clas­si­cal Hol­ly­wood edit­ing. Dur­ing Jerrica’s ini­tial online nego­ti­a­tion with Eri­ca, Chu cross­cuts to a YouTube video of duelling drum­mers. The esca­lat­ing bat­tle of beats mir­rors the one between the char­ac­ters, pro­duc­ing a thrilling jux­ta­po­si­tion of online entanglement.

Yet Jem and the Holo­grams has too few of these highs, get­ting bogged down in mean­der­ing, con­ven­tion­al plot points and dumb dia­logue. Where­as Chu’s Step Up 3D leaned heav­i­ly on the bliss­ful phys­i­cal­i­ty of bod­ies in motion, his lat­est only hints at the kinet­ic visu­als in Jerrica’s dig­i­tal playground.

For all its flaws (and there are many), the film doesn’t deserve the vit­ri­ol lobbed at it by dis­mis­sive crit­ics and angry fans. Chu’s weird, heart­felt vision has a dis­tinct per­spec­tive regard­ing online wan­der­lust and under­stands the vibran­cy of colour (a fer­ris wheel on the San­ta Mon­i­ca pier looks like a space­ship ready to lift off ). But most of all it appre­ci­ates the tena­cious will to be real in a world where every­thing is an illu­sion, no mat­ter how ill-fat­ed the pursuit.