There’s no denying that the high concept behind Netflix’s upcoming animated musical, KPop Demon Hunters, is genius. They’re the hottest band on the planet by day and demon hunters by night… and their biggest rival band are demons! How could anyone resist that set-up? As such, the movie taps into a long-lived movie phenomenon: comedies about fake bands that the audience desperately wishes were real. Sure, there are all-timers like The Rutles, Spinal Tap, and the Phantom of the Paradise, but so much more beyond. In fact, dear reader, we have three more recent entries into the pantheon for your consideration right here.

This is For Your Consideration, in which we try to come to terms with the inescapable fact that, honestly, there’s too much out there to have time to watch, read, or hear everything — by making some suggestions about things that you might have overlooked but would enjoy, anyway. Think of it as recommendations from a well-meaning friend.

That Thing You Do! does the thing that pop music movies often get wrong, and does it perfectly

On the one hand, That Thing You Do! is a perfectly charming, if somewhat innocuous and overly rose-tinted look at the music business of the early 1960s that is, perhaps, best remembered for an excitable performance from the young Steve Zahn. On the other hand, the eponymous song written as the one-hit from the Wonders (One-hit wonders, get it?) is so catchy that you completely believe that it could transform the band’s life entirely as soon as it hits the airwaves. The song, by Adam Schlesinger — who’d go on to play in real-life band Fountains of Wayne and write music for Sesame Street, Saturday Night Live, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Stephen Colbert’s A Colbert Christmas — is genuinely what makes this movie work: if it wasn’t as good as it was, we’d get bored of it on second listen and feel like everyone in the movie is maybe a little gullible to fall for it. Instead, we’re as eager to hear it again as they are, and every single time it plays (which is a lot), it’s as thrilling as that first time. For once in a movie about pop music, the music itself is the star.

Available to stream on Hulu

Josie and the Pussycats wants you to wake up, people

If That Thing You Do! makes the music the star, Josie and the Pussycats is far more interested in the industry — and entirely merciless in portraying it as cynical, manipulative, and entirely at odds with the rock and roll dream that it’s supposed to embody. (That’s what Josie, Melody, and Valerie are there for, after all.) From the speedy dispatching of boyband DuJour to the reveal that the head of MegaRecords, because of course the label is called MegaRecords, is in league with the US Government to brainwash kids into perfect consumers for the good of the economy, Josie and the Pussycats is the perfect punk rock movie that trades on the early 2000s aesthetic to deliver a wonderfully unsubtle, yet nonetheless on-target, message telling its core demographic to start thinking for themselves. That the movie manages to have its cake and eat it by sneaking in a veritable army of product placement just adds to the Situationist joy of it all. Not since Spice World had moviegoers had the chance to take both sides of the pop argument for themselves in such a fun way.

Available to stream on Prime Video

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is here to give you exactly what you want

Mixing the pop industry satire and the irresistibly catchy tunes like a mash-up of That Thing You Do! and Josie and the Pussycats, there’s an argument to be made for Poster: Never Stop Never Stopping being the finest fake pop band movie of all time… especially because, even if you took the songs out of it, it’d still be a wonderfully stupid, hilarious comedy about a bunch of dumb guys who fell out years ago and can’t say sorry because of their egos. But why would you want to take songs like ‘Things in my Jeep,’ ‘Mona Lisa,’ and especially ‘I’m So Humble’ away from the world? (To this day, I can’t work out if Adam Levine is actually in on the joke of that last one, or just likes to think that he is.) That the whole thing is also impossibly full of appearances from real music industry figures who were worryingly eager to poke fun at themselves — that Mariah Carey cameo! — just adds to the fun. It’s enough to make you wish that Thriller, Also was a real thing.

Available to stream on Netflix

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