Not the next High School Musical
On Friday Disney Channel aired its newest original movie Camp Rock; or in a different way of saying a way for Disney to promote the Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato. The ratings weren’t actually bad with an average of 8.9 million viewers watching the movie. Disney probably hoped for High School Musical numbers but those were twice as high when High School Musical 2 aired last year. The reviews weren’t exactly favorable to the movie but I still watched it.
The premise of the movie is simple; the somewhat misfit girl (played by Demi Lovato) can go to an exclusive music camp because her mother is hired as the cook. First thing she does when she gets there is deny everything she is and pretends to be someone else. She hangs out with the cool girls at the camp even though she’d rather hang out with the more normal girls. In the end of course she gets betrayed by the cool girls and returns to being herself. I don’t really understand why she’d be taken back by her “real” friends when she ditched them about an hour after meeting them.
Joe Jonas is the rock star with problems who gets sent there to get himself under control. In an of course moment yet again he falls in love with Demi’s character. In all honesty it’s all just a bit too predictable, there’s nothing wrong in movies being predictable especially not for the demographic this movie is aimed at. Even a six year old can say what’s going to happen next in this movie. Another of course moment is that the queen of the camp turns out to be very unhappy about her life in the end and gets remorseful. I have to point out that I wrote this part before the movie ended and that I was right about the outcome.
What I don’t get about this movie is the singing, some of the songs just seem jammed in there. They’re not bad songs don’t get me wrong even though they’re not exactly brilliant either, they just seem forced into the movie at odd times. Almost like they want a movie that isn’t actually a musical to change into a musical.
I also didn’t think I’d say that High School Musical acting would seem actually decent, compared to Camp Rock it just is though. The acting is just bland from everyone, almost like they’re not into the movie at all and don’t have any chemistry with each other.
As for this being Demi Lovato’s big break through; it simply isn’t. Sure the girl can sing but the movie just isn’t good enough to give her as big a break as for example High School Musical was for Vanessa Hudgens. She doesn’t exactly stand out of the movie as a great actress either, though that could be blamed on the material. She still has Welcome to Mollywood coming in the fall to prove herself as the next big Disney star. So far she hasn’t done it yes, there’s just something missing. I am curious to see what material she comes up with for her own album though.
I have no doubt there will be a sequel and that soundtrack and DVD sales will be high but I can already say that Camp Rock won’t be Disney’s next High School Musical.
