By Eliot Wilder / Now that animated rock sensation Josie and the Pussycats has been turned into a live-action band in a live-action flick, what's next? Clutch Cargo? The Archies? The Banana Splits? Personally, when it comes to movies made from best-left-forgotten cartoons - or any other fifth-rate television fare - I think the proverbial barrel has been nearly scraped dry. Nearly, but not completely. That's why I'm offering the following synopses of not improbable film plots based on that paragon of American culture - the TV commercial.

"Invasion of the Mentos Snatchers" - A creepily chipper gang of young, broad-smiled, frighteningly attractive young men and women who never utter a word and who constantly challenge cultural conventions (jumping into a stranger's car in traffic; rolling around on painted benches to turn a black suit into a pinstripe; gleefully stealing food right off a diner's plate at an outdoor cafe), take over a faceless, perpetually sunny city with their sinister cheerfulness. Soundtrack by Foo Fighters.

"Silence of the Mikey" - Life's freckle-faced spokestyke Mikey - who after finally trying the cereal ended up liking it perhaps a little too much - is grown up now, and he's hungry. Very hungry. So hungry that he's out of control. Mikey's running around Gotham in a hockey mask, taking a spoon to any bowl of cereal he can find.

"Whaaaaaazzup Doc?" - With the success of his Space Jam project, Bugs Bunny makes a big-budget return to the big screen in a tale in which the carrot-chomping wabbit places a series of wacky calls to Daffy, Sylvester and Yosemite Sam, and asks them the film title's eternal question. They respond in kind.

"A Bug's Life" - A gaggle of Gen-Zers are cruising in their VW Bug along a dark stretch of country highway on their way to a Phish concert when they encounter a mysterious house from which emanates a haunting song by Nick Drake. Discomfited by their own ambiguity - or is it their disaffectedness? - they drive off into the night, whereupon a million angry flesh-eating moths devour them.

"Just Stop It" - Horrifyingly discontinuous and bizarre images abound in this surreal, Kafka-esque drama about an average Joe surrounded by the hard-bodied overachievers of Niketown who, for no clear reason, strap him into a chair and torture him Clockwork Orange style with vague slogans like "You were born to hike!" and "Why sport?" Finally, our anti-hero, driven beyond the brink, morphs into an ad executive, and spends the rest of his career muttering marketing-speak, like, "By embracing innovative systems and optimizing frictionless technologies, I visualize efficient partnerships that strategize back-end action-items by repurposing innovative e-markets with synergizing leading-edge e-businesses."

"Cingularella" - Disney-style animated feature in which friendly mice and birds and a fairy Godmother assist a blobby, orange-colored company logo escape its oppressive multinational by helping it meet an eligible corporate raider.

"C'mon, Get Happy" - Former Partridge family teen heartthrob David Cassidy returns in his most hard-boiled performance yet, as that of a washed-up and depressed middle-aged former pop star who finds some degree of happiness when he is prescribed kid-tested, mother-approved Poprockzac. Unfortunately, grown-up Keith now has to deal with some mild side-effects. Complications include nausea, drowsiness, anxiety, weakness, tremors, dry mouth, sweating, impotence, yawning, unexpected flare-ups of psoriasis, as well as night blindness, allergic reactions to the word "teenybopper" and a morbid fear of failure known as kakorrhaphiophobia, an extremely rare and devastating condition that is often compounded by the sufferer's inability to pronounce its name.

"For Whom the Taco Bell Tolls" - This tale of war, honor and the bloody Spanish Civil War is retold from the point of view of a talking, streetwise chihuahua, adding a much-needed sense of lowbrow humor - and a dollop of salsa - to what's heretofore been considered a "serious" work of high art. Along the way, the cute little howler of a hound makes dog meat of Hemingway. Holy chalupas, Ernest!