Nicola Coughlan Refuses To Be Embarrassed About This Movie | Sorry Not Sorry
Critics play a very important role in the success of movies since they get to see the latest releases before anyone else. They create a version of films that exist through reviews, scores, and whatever else gets attached to them in the first wave of reactions. And that version often ends up being the one people carry into the cinema, whether they agree with it or not. But Nicola Coughlan is not one of them.
WATCH: Nicola Coughlan Refuses To Be Embarrassed About This Movie
When JustWatch asked Coughlan to share her guilty pleasure re-watch pick, the actor revealed that her favorite movie was not influenced by any critic reviews. "I love the movie Josie and the Pussycats. So I have no shame about it whatsoever," the actress said while promoting the second season of the 2024 dark comedy Big Mood.
"But like, it would be seen as critically not a good movie. But that's why I actually really don't like reading reviews of anything until after I've watched it," she added. This is a smart choice on Coughlan's part since the reviews for 2001's Josie and the Pussycats were pretty harsh. Roger Ebert gave the film half a star out of four and called it "dumb." (Yikes!)
I'm not really sure which part of the film irked critics so much. Josie and the Pussycats follows the titular all-girl band who become global pop icons overnight. But the trio slowly starts to realize that their sudden success feels a little too engineered to be authentic. The characters made their debut in the Archie Comics in 1963, where they started out as regular teens before starting a band.
Do Movie Reviews Actually Matter That Much?
The Josie and the Pussycats movie takes that origin and turns it into something more artificial by design, where everything from the performances to the world around them exists at a higher intensity to make a point about the commercialization of the music industry. But most critics in 2001 failed to see the satire in the story and immediately labeled it as pointless fluff.
That type of incorrect framing happens more often than critics would like to admit. As a result, it would be well within one's right to question the validity of reviews. If you think about it, a review is just the opinion of one specific person, who often measures a project's worth by their own preconceived standards and internal bias about the genre, cast, or target audience.
Once that opinion enters media circulation, it becomes the first thing people associate with the movie or television show. And that early reaction can end up doing the work of defining tone and intent before a wider audience has even had the chance to test any of that out for themselves. In that sense, reviews basically create a type of bias of their own, which is why review bombing is a thing.
So, even when audiences later respond differently, which is more common than you've likely been led to believe, the earlier framing is still there, existing alongside it as the more authoritative opinion just because the person who saw it first calls themselves a critic. This is why reviews should be taken solely at face value and not as a proper measure of worth.
Why To Watch 'Josie And The Pussycats' (And What To Watch After)
Josie and the Pussycats was misunderstood almost immediately. Critics treated it as an empty parody rather than an intentional exaggeration. But in hindsight, that same exaggerated style is exactly why it became a cult classic. It's one of those films that feels more relevant in 2026, especially in how accurately it predicted the aesthetics of hyper-commercial pop culture.
Over time, Jose and the Pussycats (available on Prime Video) was rearranged into something people defend with a kind of amused affection. Let's not forget that the actors playing the iconic Archie Comics characters (Rachael Leigh Cook as Josie, Tara Reid as Melody, and Rosario Dawson as Valerie) did a pretty amazing job at bringing them to life on the big screen.
If you follow that same thread of reimagining familiar teen archetypes, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which debuted on Netflix in 2018, is a really strong companion piece. Also based on characters from Archie Comics, the series sees the titular Sabrina Spellman (Kiernan Shipka) caught between her mortal life with friends and her growing connection to a world of witchcraft.
Over four seasons, Sabrina is constantly being pulled into what each world demands of her. The mortal world asks for normalcy and restraint, while the witching world demands loyalty and sacrifice. Tonally, it's very different from Josie and the Pussycats, but there's a shared DNA in how both stories take familiar characters and reframe them through genre exaggeration.
