We start out with
a teddy bear sitting all alone on an empty stage. One of his eyes is missing
and one of his arms is lying to the side, which is not a good development, so
there must have been a rumble over a honey pot or something. The camera zooms
in so we can see how sad it really is, then the camera pulls back out and we
have a petite, sad little girl sitting next to what we now realize is a giant
bear. Where did the girl come from? Why is everyone unhappy? Is this going to
be another horror movie about demonic children who do horrible things because
they didn’t get the right attention at the right time?
I guess not,
because the music starts and the little girl runs behind the giant bear and
comes out on the other side as the full-grown Jessie. (I guess the bear has a
magic portal back there. Who knew?) We cut to somewhere else where Jessie, now
wearing an all-black outfit, proceeds to give a short presentation on the Home Shopping Network involving dolls.
These things look a bit voodoo in nature, so there might be something Jessie
should probably share about an incident in New Orleans.
I guess the dolls
sell out really quickly, because we cut back to original Jessie, with an outfit
that clearly lets you know where her breasts are located. She’s sitting in
between the bear’s legs, because that’s not provocative at all, and sings a
bit. The bear continues to look sad, so this bit of business might not be on
his bucket list.
Then we have the
first of several montages, this one involving Bear Jessie giving a concert from
the bear’s crotch and Black Jessie running about and waving props that indicate
key words in the songs. (It does appear that Black Jessie may not be aware that
pants actually came with her outfit, but her golden shoes and designer nail
polish more than make up for this oversight.) There’s a brief bit where we see
three men just standing there without any obvious purpose. (Maybe they’re from
Child Protective Services, inquiring about what happened to the little girl in
the opening scene?)
Oh wait, Jessie
managed to slip into yet another outfit while we were checking out the Three
Strange Men, and this one is also black, so we might have to come up with
different names for our Jessie Girls. In the meantime, we keep getting shots of
Original Black Jessie standing near a road sign and trying to determine the way
to San Jose. New Black Jessie doesn’t
know the answer, so she just boogies a bit in her snug outfit until we think of
a better question. After all, if you dance and smile enough, you’ll forget that
your teddy bear doesn’t have an arm.
Whoops, we’ve got
a new Jessie, this one mucking about under a tree that grows money, so
apparently such a thing really does exist,
the rest of us just haven’t found the right travel agent. Windfall Jessie is
very perky, bopping about and quite satisfied, which I guess we all would be if
we could just walk out into the backyard and pluck the rent payment off a
branch. (And Windfall Jessie is actually wearing pants, so things are really
working out for her.)
And we have
another montage, with visits to all of the Jessie Girls that we know and love. Windfall
Jessie gets the most exposure during this time, but that’s just how things roll
when you have lots of extra cash. Just ask any of the Kardashians. And Jessie’s
highly-lacquered fingernails get second billing, because we get to see a lot of
those things as well. But with that much nail polish being waved around, you
need to be careful about accidental chipping, because a chunk of that flying
through the air could take an eye out. (Hey, is that what happened to the bear?
Poor guy.)
Okay, new Jessie,
this one in the form of a ballerina in a music box. Jessie’s gone blond for
this bit, but you don’t really notice at first because her tutu has enough
material to completely wrap a school bus. But she certainly has the part down,
looking quite elegant as she twirls around and pretends that there’s not a
metal rod running from her hiney down into the gears of the music box. (She
probably had to take special classes for realism on that angle.)
We have a quick
segment, during the part where one of the Jessies is singing about music back
in the day when we didn’t have “video ho’s” and such, where Jessie and a couple
of her trashier friends demonstrate how nasty those Nickis and Fergies of today
look. But during the midst of her political statement, when Jessie grabs her
crotch as a demonstration? It’s pretty hot, and probably helps explain why this
video has 250 million hits on YouTube. It’s a fine line to walk, eh Jessie? But
hey, you’ve got the pipes, and that impression lasts way longer than a g-string
imprint.
Next up we have
Marionette Jessie, with her and two of her friends attached to strings that
manipulate their moves, followed by scenes where Marionette Jessie is forced to
ride a tricycle that is too small for her. (I can’t speak for Jessie on the
political undertones of that, but I’ll just take it to be a slam at the record
executives with their heads up their collective magic portals.)
And we have
another montage (well, really, videos these days are basically one huge
montage), this one featuring the marionettes, both of the Black Jessies,
Tricycle Jessie, nail polish, the kitchen sink, and the introduction of B.o.B,
reminding us that this is one of those “featuring” songs where artists who have
never even spoken to one another before now decide they can’t live unless they
do a duet. (With “duet” usually meaning two separate personalities and styles are
slammed together in a song, and the artists never actually see each other
during production. More marionette strings.)
Anyway, B.o.B
struts on the minimalist stage, performing next to one of those old-school cars
that looks like it’s been rode hard and put up wet. (I have no idea what kind
of car, I’m not one of those people who can see something coming down the
highway and yell out the make, model and year and then have a small orgasm. It’s
a car, beat-up. End of my knowledge base.)
B.o.B has something
to say about six-strings and half-stacks and garages and an upcoming trip to
Mars.
Not really sure about all that, but then he gets to a
nice bit about doing the music for the love of it and not the bling and
suddenly I’ve got my lighter in the air. (Which impressed nobody else in the
house and I quickly put it down, but still.) Then he goes into a sequence where
he dances next to giant-size replicas of those little plastic army guys we
played with as a kid until we lost all of them in the seat cushions on the
couch.
Cue a fancy,
big-ass dollhouse, which opens up to reveal Jessie squished inside of it, still
not wearing pants. (What has she got against those things?) There’s very little
room for her to move, but Jessie is a trooper and manages to pull off some nice
dance moves even though she can only squirm about one inch in any direction.
And this kicks
off the final montage, with B.o.B initially dancing with Jessie for a while
(proving that they actually met), but then he walks away and returns to his
record label. But the rest of the Jessies are still with us, along with some
new friends like (maybe) Jessie with some kind of diamond-encrusted lipstick
and one of the sidekick marionettes who clearly needs some frizz-control
products for her hair. Everyone seems very happy that we’ve dispensed with the
softball criticisms of the music industry and now we can all relax.
Big Jessie gets
to dance with Little Jessie from the first scene (proving she’s just fine, so
those Child Protective Services people can stick it). Bear Jessie gets to sit
in a giant chair and show us some serious red strappy pumps on her feet, the
marionettes have a much better attitude, and Money-Tree Jessie gets to lay on
the floor and look at one of her legs that has been disassociated from her
body. (Okay, that last bit returns us to horror-movie territory, and I don’t
want to spoil the mood by asking questions about it, so let’s just look the
other way and keep dancing. Even if Money-Tree can’t do that anymore.)
Oh wait, I lied,
Money can still get her groove on, in another scene where she’s back by the
tree and tearing up the currency fruit, because she don’t need no bling when
she can just sing. The CPS guys are doing a line dance, Tricycle Jessie has
upped her status to moto-cross clearance and is whizzing about, and even B.o.B
shows up here and there for this closing number, proving that some people
really do mean it when they say they want to work together. (Unlike the
Republicans in the House of Representatives.)
The song rolls to
an end with all of the Jessie Girls and their friends doing the “aaahhhhh”
final bit of the lyrics, which is actually quite nice as a song closer and a
video wind-down, and then Squished Jessie smiles at us as she pulls the front
of her dollhouse closed…
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