OKAY, LET'S get the proviso out of the way first. The screening I attended featured a gaggle of teenage girls who screamed their way through the picture and – despite emitting the odd pleasingly ironic snort – seemed to enjoy the thing on its own wretched terms. Good luck to them. Aware that Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experiencedoes all it promises, I award the film a second star and expect nothing but congratulation for my munificence.
Angry complaints thus deflected, let us ponder the bland, self-satisfied trio of prim Christian warblers who go by the name of The Jonas Brothers. Cynically packaged to an extent that makes old-school prefabs such as Westlife seem like The Fall, the band demand to be viewed as rock stars rather than as a pop act.
Hark! The one who looks like a chimp has a guitar. Actually, two of them have guitars and those instruments are even occasionally plugged in. There’s a singer as well and, having seen grown-up rock stars in action, he knows to wave the microphone stand about his head while screeching the inane choruses to his puzzlingly hook- free anthems.
But this is not a rock gig. Featuring tightly choreographed dance routines and occasional guest appearances by other teenage captives of the Disney Channel, the concert has as much in common with a gig by, say, McFly (let’s not start on a real band) as it does with the Allied assault on Normandy. It’s more of a ceremony than a performance.
Still, the thousands of girls in Madison Square Garden (I spotted just one boy among the multitudes) appeared flooded with joy and barely contained lust throughout.
What can they have made of the truly jaw-dropping routine during which the lads press squat, rigid hoses against their torsos and eject white, sticky foam over their bouncing devotees? I mean it’s . . . Well, there may be children reading this, so I’ll say no more.
