She's a Rocker! A History of Girl Group Movies

SATISFACTION, 1988
GROUP: Mystery: Jennie Lee (Justine Bateman), Daryle (Julia Roberts), Tina (Debbie Harry), Mooch (Trini Alvarado), Billy (Britta Phillips)
• Watching Satisfaction is like opening a time capsule from the 1980s, complete with Julia Roberts and costars dressed in leather jackets and half-finger gloves. They spend the entire movie treating men like objects and seeing whose hair can withstand the most hairspray. We say this is a case of reverse sexism.

SPICE WORLD, 1997
GROUP: The Spice Girls: Posh Spice (Victoria Beckham), Baby Spice (Emma Bunton), Sporty Spice (Melanie Chisholm), Ginger Spice (Geri Halliwell), Scary Spice (Melanie Brown)
• Call this one a guilty pleasure, but we'd be lying if we said we didn't have some strange fascination with the Spice Girls. After all, even dudes were belting out "Wannabe" in the shower back in '96! What, you weren't? Stupid, stupid truth serum.

DESPERATE TEENAGE LOVEDOLLS, 1984
GROUP: The Lovedolls: Bunny Tremelo (Hillary Rubens), Kitty Caryall (Jennifer Schwartz), Patch Kelly (Janet Housden)
• It's easy to see why so many women hate men after watching this movie. Desperate Teenage Lovedolls is about a girl group whose manager uses them as his own personal sex slaves. Good thing for the Lovedolls, they're a group of feminists able to overcome all the negative male influences with the help of...rock! Hmmm, maybe that's what LiLo's been up to all these years.

DREAMGIRLS, 2006
GROUP: The Dreams: Deena Jones (Beyonce), Effie White (Jennifer Hudson), Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose)
• Dreamgirls is based on the story of Diana Ross and her journey to success in the '60s with her girl group, The Supremes. So you've got a history lesson...and Beyoncé's ass. Ok, so we've got a "one step forward, two steps back" thing going on with our embrace of feminism, but at least we're trying, right?

JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS, 2001
GROUP: Josie and the Pussycats: Josie McCoy (Rachel Leigh Cook), Melody Valentine (Tara Reid), Valerie Brown (Rosario Dawson)
• Watch this one for the plot about an all-girl group that finds out there's subliminal messages hidden in their pop songs. Are we missing something or doesn't all teenybopper music have subliminal messages? Why else do we yell "Oops I did it again!" every time we "spill milk"?

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FABULOUS STAINS, 1982
GROUP: The Stains: Corinne Burns (Diane Lane), Jessica McNeil (Laura Dern), Tracy Burns (Marin Kanter)
• What was intended as a cautionary tale about the seamy side of the music industry turns out to be just the opposite (unless for some reason you don't like girls with mohawks and way too much eye makeup). Sort of like the love child of Ziggy Stardust and Courtney Love.

MAMMA MIA!, 2008
THE GROUP: Donna and the Dynamos: Donna Sheridan (Meryl Streep), Rosie (Julie Waters), Tanya (Christine Baranski
• This movie isn't entirely about a girl band, but it does have a scene with Meryl Streep and her fellow wannabe cougars reuniting to perform at a bachelorette party. Ah, nothing like reliving the wonders of youth while in menopause! Guess that's three steps back in our embrace of feminism.

BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, 1970
GROUP: The Kelly Affair: Kelly Macnamara (Dolly Read), Cynthia Myers (Casey Anderson), Pet Danforth (Marcia McBroom)
• A fictitious all-girl group moves out to Los Angeles to get famous but find themselves in trouble when the band members start getting caught up in love triangles galore. Sounds kinda awesome, but BTVOTD gets a little bogged down with a corny, dramatic plot line. But we are digging the hippie chicks with the Marcia Brady look hard.

PREY FOR ROCK & ROLL, 2003
GROUP: Clam Dandy: Jacki (Gina Gershon), Sally (Shelly Cole), Faith (Lori Petty), Tracy (Drea de Matteo)
• The plot of this movie sounds like a biography for Lindsay Lohan, which equals all the necessary bases for a quality girl group movie. It's a good, wholesome film with a main character on the verge of a breakdown as she's surrounded by lesbians, drug addiction, and the other cliché trappings of fame. As for feminism, this one's got more girls in leather jackets than a Melissa Etheridge concert.

SOME LIKE IT HOT, 1959
GROUP: Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), Josephine (Tony Curtis), Daphne (Jack Lemmon)
• A precursor to girl rock and Men in Drag movies, Some Like It Hot stars Curtis and Lemmon as two men who dress up as women in order to hide from the mob. Marilyn Monroe and the Go-Gos FTW, but Sorority Boys and White Chicks we could do without.