She and her sisters relish their requisite pop star makeovers, despite claiming to want to stick to their true selves. Jerrica accepts her Jem transformation with almost no thought at all. After achieving a 'massive 36,000 hits' (seriously), the girls are driven out to Los Angeles at the behest of Erica Raymond, who promises to make Jerrica (and begrudgingly, her family of bandmates) into the pop star she is meant to be. This changes quickly - too quickly - when her sister, Kimber, uploads a video Jerrica took of herself playing a bland, sad-girl acoustic tune to YouTube, where it soon takes off. At first, Jerrica is introduced as shy and seemingly unable to perform outside of the guise of her pink-haired persona. But this film fails to make use of that conceit.

The original Jem notably dealt with split identities of her own, with the crux of that series being her struggle to reconcile her secret identity with her true nature. When this ends, however, it is quickly revealed that the girls are wearing wigs, that their makeup is just for show, and that they are simply very, very normal girls living in dire straits with their down-on-her-luck aunt, played by an unrecognizable Molly Ringwald.

Each of them sports unnaturally colored hair, with Jem's gigantic pink cut up front. The film starts out with a lo-fi music video of the girls dicking around in their backyard, playing implausibly tuneful jams of their own creation. That is one of the most glaring omissions in this revamp for a modern audience. Jem and the Holograms falls dramatically short of the tackiness that remains appealing about the cartoon

I didn't grow up as a major fan of Jem and her pals - I missed that boat by a couple of years - but I certainly am familiar with their story and unforgettable aesthetic. Much of my frustration stemmed from the fact that there was almost nothing present in the film that warranted the usage of the iconic toy and TV franchise. That's not to suggest that things had been smooth sailing up until that point: I had audibly groaned at several moments leading up to this one, as well. Everything increases in awfulness following this mid-movie musical interlude.

Jem and the holograms video wars