If I recall my youth correctly, “Pixel Perfect” might have been the last Disney Channel Original I saw. Now that I’m rewatching it, I have questions. It might also be because we’ve seen a lot of holograms in the past couple of years. This, honestly, could have been the start of bringing holograms of dead celebs on stage at large concerts.
Roscoe and Sam are best friends, allegedly. Sam has a girl band named the Zettabytes. They go to a local club to audition, but the owner tells them that Sam can not dance and, therefore, is not fit to lead the band. Roscoe, who thinks Sam and the band sound great, creates a holographic lead singer named Loretta Modern. You know how the Powerpuff Girls dad made them by just combining stuff that he thought would make his girls great? This is what Roscoe did with Loretta. Surprisingly, the world loves Loretta even after they discover that she’s not a real person. You would think life would be smooth sailing after that. It was not.
This movie tried to do so much, and they did none of it well due to the amount of time they had. The main question in this film that they leave the audience to decide is whether these holograms are individuals or are they just creations. This was such an important topic but may have been a bit too complicated for a Disney Channel audience. There was also room for a larger discussion about the music industry and how it was changing in the 2000s. If the movie were geared towards a different audience, I think the focus should have been on those two topics.
Now, I don’t know a lot about technology, but I think I can confidentially say that you can not make a hologram do a backflip off of solid objects. You can’t make a holograms grip a pole and spin around it. Those parts took me out of the fantasy, however, let’s dive into the questions of the rights of AI or holograms. Did Loretta have the right to choose what happened to her with the record executive? Is Loretta a person? Roscoe programmed her to have feelings and thoughts (much like the hologram in “Smart House“) so, for him, Loretta had rights just like he did. For his dad, before they entered the executive’s office, Loretta was just a bunch of lines of code that mimicked real life. Is that the same thing?
You know something that really spoke to me while watching this film and wondering where my best friend went? Loretta and Sam had a conversation in her head when she went into the electroencephalogram (EEG) machine. Sam envied a couple things about Loretta. One, Loretta had all of Roscoe’s attention and she used to before Loretta was made, and two, Loretta was made to be perfect. What Sam didn’t know is that Loretta envied her because of her flaws. I believe she remarked that Sam got to make mistakes while she never got that chance. Would she still be a successful hologram if she was more like Sam and made mistakes? Is it the same if Loretta is upgraded with more knowledge and evolves that way versus Sam failing at playing the guitar or writing lyrics and getting better as she learns what works and doesn’t? Questions like these are why I say this movie was made at a great time but just not for the right audience. Too deep for us teenagers at that time to really understand and grasp the complexity of this issue.
Now, I hate when everyone screams, “Do a remake!” But and however, I do believe that this, and maybe “Smart House,” could benefit from a remake or an updated version. I know we have a lot of movies and shows that deal with AI, but the nostalgia of what we once knew while updating it to reflect the now could be an adventure. I would allow it.
Tell me. Do you remember this movie? Does it deserve a remake? Who would be in it? Also, shoutout to Porscha Coleman who I forgot was in this movie.
