Important questions are raised in the Jonas’ much anticipated concert movie debut. Disney’s freshly minted musical superstars, the barely legal Nick, Joe and Kevin Jonas take us behind the scenes of their madcap professional life. We enter their hotel suite, their beds, and the mad fray of fandom.
They’re barrelling through a couple of days on the “Burning Up” tour, with a p.r. and concert stop at Madison Square Garden. It’s just as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Bay City Rollers, Duran Duran, the Backstreet Boys and Duran Duran again did it before them.
The film’s extensively staged but has a documentary feel, recalling the Fab Four’s 1964 breakthrough film A Hard Day’s Night, down to running the fan gauntlet and fooling around in various back stages, hotel hallways and parking lots. There are precious few moments of authenticity, but it’s unlikely that dedicated fans will care. Little is learned about the JoBros, who they are, how they got where they are, or how they interact as brothers.
Are Kev, Nick and Joe bone fide talents? Is this the life they want? Do they know what they’re giving up when they can’t walk down a street unmolested? These questions will have to be answered somewhere else. But again, it doesn’t matter. The fans who will see the film again an again, already have the dope. We grown ups are in the dark.
The film makes no reference to the Jonas family’s Christian lifestyle and no purity rings are in evidence. But talk about idolatry, the boys are happy to be raised twenty feet above the audience to be looked at and idolised. Still, no matter because they’re selling just one thing – mass appeal.
Who is that pulling off their undershirts backstage just before the cameraman is shooed away? Must be their mother. This and an early morning hotel breakfast sequence are the sole revealing moments, even if we learn only that Joe likes peach jelly and dislikes being shot in his skivvies. I’m with you there, Joe.
We suspect that there is or was something between handsome Joe and the Jonas’ special musical guest Taylor Swift, a statuesque blonde new country singer with stage presence to burn. They are clearly very familiar with each other. Demi Lovato, another talented firecracker performs to bring a little non-family estrogen to the proceedings. These ladies are the real deal, entertainers through and through.
Forty years later A Hard Day’s Night rocks and enchants but forty years from now, the Jonas’ 3-D Concert Experience will be forgotten. It’s an unfair comparison, but the filmmakers asked for it, by inserting Hard Day’esque sequences, so it’s fair game.
3-D is perfect for “Up” a daffy animated adventure shown in a trailer, that spans earth and sky. Just perfect.
35mm 3D concert film
Your Talkback on this Story