Sunday, June 7, 2009

O Brothers!

The latest Disney confection, the Jonas Brothers, show they've really made it. They're getting a puppy dog rock series all of their own on the Disney Channel in the U.S. and Canada's Family Channel.
Titled simply Jonas, the half hour sitcom is not recommended for anybody over 17. Those little girls between 13 and 16 will lap it up just as they've been compulsively watching Hannah Montana for the past few years.
The rest of us may wonder what the shouting is all about. Starring are the bubblegum sensations Kevin, Joe and Nick, 16, 17 and 19 respectively.  They're darkly handsome, clean cut, nice to their elders, in short the kind of teens you'd want hanging out with your kids.
Here they play fictional versions of themselves as teens stuck in a high school to die for. At home they have concerned parents (who are also taller) and inhabit what looks like a renovated fire hall. Their shared bedroom is the entire second floor complete with poles to slide down and a wide variety of expensive musical instruments and games of all kinds.
Remember this is their first collective outing as actors. They're very inexperienced but in a delightfully gauche kind of way. The eldest, Nick, reads his lines with the voice of a bunny rabbit.
The youngest. Kevin, has a voice that hasn't changed as yet but when he's strummin' a ditty --which he also wrote--he suddenly seems so very mature. Joe has been described as the Beyonce of the squakily clean troup, all dark smoldering eyes, and hair in his eyes.
This one has been crafily tuned out by Disney who certainly know their audience. It's about girls mooning after them but that's as far as it gets. No smoking, of course. No horsing around with the girlies you undersatand. No smutty language or anything that's off color. They lads don't seem to be sporting their chastity rings but maybe that's because they'd be called names at high school.
In the first episode Kevin writes a song for a girl he likes and she takes it as her own. In the second episode the guys inadvertently destroy mom's home movies of them as kids so they re-enact all the goofy scenes as semi-adults and everybody has a good cry.
How many teen hunks have I encountered over the years? Starting with Bobby Sherman I can list David and Shaun Cassidy, Johnny Depp, John Travolta, Leif Garrett, John Stanos. I could go on and on.
Some of them disappeared in the blink of an eye, Others survived by learning the craft of acting, something the Jonas trio have yet to master.
In the meantime there's this pleasant and inoffensive sitcom. It could have been better --The Monkees had a similar show that was jam packed with crazy comedy and goofy situations, remember?
But the Disney people invented this formula and the Jonas sensations are stuck with it.The first two episodes run bacto back on Family OnDemand beginning Tuesday, June 9 and the series sports the first two episodes Friday June 12 at 6 p.m. Got all that?
 

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