Jem - The Movie (DVD)

...now you're talking! forget bratz Jem is the original girl with a passion for fashion. A mix of bright animation, pop music, cool clothes and girly adventure, Jem was the perfect combination for girls of the 80's.

The Story-
Truly Outrageous is a feature length adventure following the beginnings of Jem and her band The Holograms. The story starts with the death of record company owner Emmet Benton(nice beginning eh) who has left ...
...stage accross the way and Jem and the holograms take the stage, their upbeat pop song takes the crowd by storm much to Erics annoyance. Furiously he confronts Jerrica with a challenge, he'll give her 6 months to make Jem more popular than the Misfits then they'll have another battle of the bands, the manager of which ever band wins gets full control of the company. Jerrica accepts the challenge and the deal is sweetened by Howard Sands a film producer, ... more

The 80's gave boys He-man, Transformers, Thundercats, MASK, Visionaries..........the list goes on, but what did girls get? She-ra, well she was great but a rip off of He-man. My little pony, great until you were a certain age. Jem, now you're talking! forget bratz Jem is the original girl with a passion for fashion. A mix of bright animation, pop music, cool clothes and girly adventure, Jem was the perfect combination for girls of the 80's.

The Story-
Truly Outrageous is a feature length adventure following the beginnings of Jem and her band The Holograms. The story starts with the death of record company owner Emmet Benton(nice beginning eh) who has left half the company to his daughter Jerrica and half to the corrupt Eric Raymond(he didnt realise Eric was corrupt at the time)

Jerrica and her friends, Kimber(actually her sister) Aja(foster sister) and Shana are trying to run a girls foster home(also left by Mr.Benton) with the help of Jerrica's boyfriend Rio. The home is in trouble and desperately needs money for essential repairs. Jerrica goes to Starlight Music, the company left to her by her father, to borrow some money. Refusing Eric tells her he plans to revolutionise the company and introduces his new girl rock group The Misfits made up of lead singer Pizazz, guitarist Roxy and keyboard player Stormer. Jerrica is outraged and tells Eric she will not let him ruin the company.

Later that night Jerrica is talking with her friends when Kimber hands her a parcel, a messenger had left it for her. Thinking it was from her boyfriend Jerrica opens the box and reveals a beautiful pair of earrings, as she puts the earrings on strange things happen and an image of a woman appears in from of the group saying they should follow her. The group do and are led to the starlight drive in(you guessed it, left to them by Mr.Benton) in the old drive in warehouse the 4 girls discover wonderful gifts- a collection of fabulous clothes, musical instruments and car and most of all Synergy, a machine with the ability to create holograms, she can create doubles of people, change their appearances.........all the fantastic things you'd want a hologram machine to do. Jerrica is able to communicate with synergy via the earrings she recieved earlier that night. Realising she could use synergy to stop Eric Jerrica forms a plan.

Eric is holding a battle of the bands featuring the Misfits and several other terrible groups, he's rigged it so the Misfits are bound to win. Just as he is about to announce the winner a song explodes on a stage accross the way and Jem and the holograms take the stage, their upbeat pop song takes the crowd by storm much to Erics annoyance. Furiously he confronts Jerrica with a challenge, he'll give her 6 months to make Jem more popular than the Misfits then they'll have another battle of the bands, the manager of which ever band wins gets full control of the company. Jerrica accepts the challenge and the deal is sweetened by Howard Sands a film producer, who offers a movie contract and a mansion to the winner.

The movie goes on to show the following months and both bands attempts to make an album, produce videos and market themselves. Jem and the holograms play fair as all good girls do but the Misfits and Eric try every dirty trick going, even kidnapping one of the holograms, planting a bomb at the location of a Holograms interview and gatecrashing television interviews. It is packed full of action with poor Jerrica or Jem usually on the recieving end of the worst treatment, most people would have brought the police in and had the Misfits arrested by now but that never happens in cartoon land. Obviously Synergy is a big feature throughout the movie aiding Jem at every turn.

Also running through the story is the love triangle between Jerrica, Rio and Jem. Rio is confused by his feelings for both girls especially as he barely knows Jem, and Jerrica is plagued by guilt for not revealing the truth of Jems identity to him.

The movie is regularly broken up with short songs in the form of music videos, all very MTV style with the band name and song title displayed at the bottom of the screen. Jems songs are usually very pleasant, uplifting or romantic, songs such as "twilight in paris" "ive got my eye on you" and "music is magic" the Misfits are a bit more heavy metal and their songs are more aggressive with titles such as "taking it all" "out of my way" and "making mischief"

The battle of the bands finally arrives after a string of trauma's for Jem and the Holograms at the hands of Eric and the Misfits. They almost dont make it to the stage and only just get there in time before being disqualified. The finali is as big and colourful as you'd expect from an 80's cartoon with the kind of result i dont need to tell you, i think you can guess who wins.

Characters & Animation-
Think barbie not bratz and thats the kind of image it trys to portray, as realistic as a 2d cartoon can be to life. The characters are dressed in amazing 80's style fashions with big hair and i mean BIG. Blue, pink, green, purple theres every hair colour here except brown!

They are drawn to move as normal women would but the dance scenes come off a little tricky, if only my feet could move so fast, i'd be tapping faster than Bonnie Langford or Catherine Zeta Jones.

There are some major continuity problems with the animation, characters can simply dissapear frm screen in the middle of the scene and reappear seconds later. Wrong voices come out of the characters mouths occasionally and there are hair/outfit colour changes again before going back to normal seconds later.

The dvd-
Theres not much to tell about the dvd really, it has a scene selection option or you can simply play the movie. There are no special features or bonus items, i guess they werent expecting it to be released on dvd back then(hey dvd weren't even invented then right!) so there are no games, deleted scenes or behind the scenes features.

It comes in a standard dvd size case but is hot pink in colour matching the bright Jem logo. The cover features Jem singing within a star shape, a dreamy star spankled background, the logo and "Truly Outrageous" There are no inner booklets or leaflets. The disc itself features Jems logo and the words "the movie" on the same blue dreamy background as the cover.

Other info-
The film is certificate U

Is in dolby digital sound, with aspect ratio of 4:3

It retails at roughly £7 and is available in places such as HMV and Virgin as well as online from Play.com, Amazon and Ebay.

The series are also available on dvd but i have yet to find them in the uk. They available from overseas via online retailers such as Amazon and Ebay shops.

My Opinion-
I loved this film as a girl and all the series that went with it. Back then we only had video but you can imagine my delight when i discovered it had been released on dvd as i browsed through the kids dvds in HMV. I was on a budget at the time but it was Jem and she's worth blowing even the strictest of budgets, £7 isnt really that bad, so i snatched her up and refused to put the dvd back on the shelf in case someone else picked it up(there was only one copy)

The first chance i got i put in the dvd(had to wait until my poor suffering husband was out, dont think he wanted to watch it really) and watched the whole movie without moving. It lost none of its magic and i sang along like i would have done when i was little. I'm trying to brainwash my own little girl into enjoying the movie, she's only 9 months at the moment so i figure theres plenty of time for me to get her hooked, im sure she'll love it as much as i do, the colours, songs and adventure is irresistable.

I wasnt dissapointed at the lack of dvd features as i wasn't expecting any and im not surprised they havent worked out the animation kinks, thats part of what makes it fun.

The only downside to this movie is it's totally girl orientated, yes a guy could watch it but i wouldnt expect him to enjoy it in the same way he would He-man or Transformers.

I highly recommend this for 80's girls after nostalgia or fun loving little girls today.  

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