THEY’VE got a lot of spunk, these Jonas Brothers. I hate spunk.
“Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience” is exactly what you’d think. So read your expectations, and you already know if this is the greatest cinematic event since the Lumiére brothers set up shop, or more like getting your soft bits subjected to a deep rubdown with steel wool.
The brothers are three young sprouts, brunette and rubbery. They do so many flips and somersaults across the stage that I thought their management team must be headed by Bela Karolyi. None wore an identifying badge through the performance, so I supplied my own names. The one with the sideburns is Burnsie. The one who is always in the middle, Chachi-esque in his sleeveless shirt and feathery hair, has to be Fluffy, and on the far side, with the bushy curls, that one is Shrubbery.
Messrs. Jonas sing subdivision, three-car-garage pop, but their catalog is not vast – and for one long period they are satisfied to stand and allow worship to take place while they occupy 20-foot pedestals that have lifted them straight up above the stage. Where’s an earthquake when you need one?
High up, the Jonases savor every pitch and swell in the sea of Awkward Age females (braces, bonding via shrieking, that funny elbow-locked-to-ribcage wave). It can’t be easy, this business of being God. That’s why there must be three of them.
Fluffy seems the most worshipped, yet (because?) least burdened by skills. He plays tambourine, while the others thwack away at pianos and drums and guitars. He leads the vocals through a series of indistinguishably peppy concert numbers (they make the Monkees sound like Mötley Crüe) broken up with some glimpses of the lads “romping,” or skittering, across our city. Sometimes, they are being mobbed by fans. Other times they are talking about being mobbed by fans, but on the other hand, there are moments where they are watching TV footage of themselves being mobbed by fans. Not for them, the angst of fame.
Onstage, they kick, point and strike dramatic back-to-back poses meant to show them at their most torrid – or at least as torrid as you can look when your hair is topiary and you are wearing American-flag tennis shoes.
During one sequence, everyone pulls their equipment – grand piano, guitars, even amplifiers – into a meadow in Central Park to do a show, which is amusing because the performance is obviously being lip-synched after having been recorded in a cozy studio. In another scene, the boys ride Segways and otherwise make merry in celebration of their scripted unpredictability. This footage is speeded up for extra wackiness. I didn’t catch the name of the song that plays against this, but I think it was “Can’t Buy Me Talent.”
In between scenes the “elegant” Jonas Brothers logo, which looks like something Donald Trump designed to adorn his toilet-paper holders, swooshes across the screen. Much as I admired the stamina of the girls in the audience – how do they keep their arms raised for an hour and a half? – I couldn’t help but wince every time a fan’s face was clearly visible. I was picturing cruel future college roommates endlessly replaying the clip while poor Amanda or Emily silently begs to be noticed as someone who is very serious about her Sylvia Plath or Anne Sexton.
The film gets one star from me for the admirable brevity of its running time and another for the definite article in its title, seemingly an implicit promise that there will be no sequel. If there must be one, I suggest an “Alien vs. Predator”-style clashup featuring another franchise. Bring it, Hanson.