The Hell Did They Do To Jem And The Holograms?

To paraphrase Squeak from The Color Purple: Harpo, who dis Jem?

When Jon M. Chu announced a year ago that he was doing a Jem and the Holograms movie, I threw a slight double side-eye of concern at the news, because he said he had planned to bring it into modern day. But I figured that there’s no way he can make a Jem movie without dipping her in neon pink paint before rolling her around in rainbow glitter. The slight double side-eye of concern became a full double side-eye of concern when Layla Grant from Nashville was cast as Jem and they released a poster that looked very un-Jem-like. Well, I’m not making a full double-side eye of concern anymore. I am widening my eyes like a crazy person while screaming NO NO NO NO NOOOO!

Over the weekend, a stream of new promo pictures were burped up. We also learned that this butchery of our childhoods is coming out on October 23rd. A synopsis was also released and on the truly outrageous scale, this movie looks like it’s not even a 1. Jem is truly, truly meh.

As a small-town girl catapults from underground video sensation to global superstar, she and her three sisters begin a one-in-a-million journey of discovering that some talents are too special to keep hidden. In Universal Pictures’ JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS, four aspiring musicians will take the world by storm when they see that the key to creating your own destiny lies in finding your own voice.

So Jem is a YouTube star?! The fuck? Why didn’t Jon M. Chu just slash our childhoods in the face while eating a lemon and then spit in the open wounds? It would’ve stung less.

To recap: The movie doesn’t take place in the 80s, it doesn’t have The Misfits or Syngery in it and they’ve made Jem and the Holograms look like basics who wear UGGs in the winter, know the Starbucks secret menu by heart and dye their hair totally crazy colors like pink when they go to Coachella. It’s like Jem and the Holograms brought to you by ABC Family. I’m about to make a star earring out of paper and a pink marker so I can grab it while asking, “Why, Synergy, whyyyy?!”