They may have had a point:
Actually, I'm not sure they did. Okay-- the usually delightful Parker Posey seems a little unhinged (and not in a method acting kind of way), and at the end of the day, the story would have made a fine half-hour cartoon episode. But still-- there is remarkably little to complain about.
And yet:
The movie's biggest problem is marketing-- it is a mashup of its cartoon source material and a reasonably clever piece of satire. It mocks the world of commercial musicianship awesomely, from the manufactured boy band DuJour (some great cameos here) with music as pointedly satirical of its genre as Spinal Tap's songbook was of metal, all the way to relentlessly hilarious product placement. This film never takes its meta-tongue out of its cheek, even when we arrive at a climactic moment that underlines how certain cameo players couldn't be brought back for this scene.
I'm not kidding. This movie is, at times, sharp and funny and lacks only the courage to completely jettison its kid-cartoon roots and simply swing for the fences. It's subversive and sly; it knows its plot is predictable, but is determined to make some fun on the way.
Also, the music is actually not a bad representative sample of what it pretends to be.
