THE name but thankfully not much else is taken from an animated 1970s series. The story of an all-girl pop band being shamelessly marketed to the top is an American twist on SpiceWorld. The cynicism rivals Malcolm McLaren's plotting of the rise of petulant punks The Sex Pistols in The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle.

On the surface, this energetic cautionary tale of pop fame, burn-out and resurrection is targeted at the wish-fulfilment teen-girl market, but its satirical, knowing humour will play better with the Mojo-reading, Radio Two-listening male rock fan, who is not averse to pretty young girls flashing it about on stage, while enjoying jokes about brazen product placement and the Faustian price of celebrity.

The pop industry is riper than ever for a send-up, and the writer-director team of Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont display a juvenile glee in mocking its lust for exploitation, consigning fading, warring boy band Du Jour to yesterday in a plane crash sequence with echoes of both This Is Spinal Tap and Almost Famous.

Mega Records' slimy band manager Wyatt Frame (Alan Cumming) must find a replacement urgently, and stumbles across a grunge-loving garage band of heavenly high-school babes: singer Josie (Rachael Leigh Cook), guitarist Valerie (Rosario Dawson) and Barbie Doll drummer Melody (Tara Reid).

Once under the manipulative, corporate control of Mega Records' answer to Cruella DeVil (Parker Posey), Josie and The Pussycats are given the obligatory pop make-over in the Hear'Say manner. They strike chart-topping gold as part of the deranged boss's plan for world domination through brain-washing teenagers but, in pop tradition, the friends become self-obsessed, fall out and fall apart, a self-destructive journey equally manipulated by the record company.

The upbeat finale suggests Kaplan and Elfont want to have their cake and eat it, and while the satire gradually loses its sharpness, there is much to enjoy, from Cook's riot-girl goddess act and Reid's fantastically dumb blonde to Posey's grotesque boss and Cumming's reprise of Richard E Grant's ingratiating manager in SpiceWorld.

Add the brash MTV-style camerawork, the power-pop soundtrack and the amusing hypocrisy of Josie And The Pussycats mirroring all the marketing moves it lampoons, and this sweet-and-sour dissection of youth culture both purrs and shows its claws.