One thing I've noticed after actually being home this summer is that aside from sports and the occasional CSI or Law & Order marathon on basic cable, weekend TV tends to suck. There really isn't that much on that isn't a rerun, a bad reality show, or a horribly censored movie on late-night cable.
If you do enough channel surfing in the off hours, you're bound to eventually end up on Disney Channel. Now when I was growing up in the late 80's, The Disney Channel (before it dropped the leading preposition) used to showcase the traditional Disney characters: Mickey, Donald, Pooh, the princesses, etc., but it was a premium channel that kids begged their parents to pay for which in turn made Disney money and reinforced the brand. Somewhere along the line, it switched to basic cable and slowly transformed into a sort of Nickelodeon-lite with cheaply-produced comedies rather than focusing on the core Disney brand. By the late 90's, Disney Channel still showed some interesting late-night stuff branded as Disney Vault (Disneyland specials from the 50's/60's, black & white TV series reruns), but even that has since gone by the wayside.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand the Disney Channel business model as it is today. At any given time, it's got a handful of currently-produced comedy series in rotation, along with a large stock of Disney Channel Original Movies ("DCOMs"), along with reruns of slightly older series and cartoons. There's no commercials, just promos for other series and commercials for Disney movies, theme parks, music, and games. Apparently the Disney suits have figured out how to make this work, and work well. They can, for example, with a single half-hour episode of a flagship series, spin off and launch a multi-platinum-selling but otherwise cookie-cutter boy band almost overnight. But I digress. What's undeniable is how Disney has taken a couple of well worn-out formulas and elevated them to multi-million dollar art forms.
Disney's Camp Rock is in many ways like a finely polished turd. It looks good, it sounds good, it's unoffensive, seems to teach some morals, and tries and mostly succeeds in making you feel good at the end. Unfortunately, if you think about what it's really saying once you strip away the icing, it stinks.
In this movie, which first premiered in 2008, current Disney megastar Demi Lovato stars in her breakout role as Mitchie Torres, a shy teenager and singer/songwriter who's been begging her parents to send her Camp Rock, an exclusive summer music camp for aspiring rockers. At first, her family can't afford it, but Mitchie winds up being able go after her mom's catering company picks up the camp's food contract for the summer. Camp Rock is run by a stereotypically British rock star whose nephew, Shane, is the star of the popular boy band Connect 3, played by real-life Disney boy band the Jonas Brothers. Shane (Joe Jonas) has been getting stung by the press for bad-boy behavior, so their record label sends him back to Camp Rock, where Connect 3 originally hooked up, in order to rehabilitate his image and record a duet with the winner of Final Jam, the camp concert at the end of the summer. The camp is filled with plenty of other cliche characters: Tess (Meaghan Martin) is the blond bitchy diva whose equally bitchy Broadway star mother won't giver her the time of day; Peggy (Jasmine Richards) is the talented but unappreciated singer who's stuck as backup until breaking out at the end; Alyson Stoner plays veteran camper Caitlyn Geller, who becomes friends with Mitchie and provides exposition for the audience.
When Mitchie arrives at camp and meets Tess and her friends with impressive industry connections, she quickly decides being the daughter of the cook just isn't cool and invents a fake story about her background and her parents being entertainment industry bigwigs. The ploy works and Mitchie moves into Tess' groups's cabin, much to the annoyance of Caitlyn. Mitchie's still to shy to sing in front of the camp, but plays one of her songs on a piano when she thinks no one is listening. Unknown to her, Shane stops being pissed off long enough to hear voice through the window and becomes determined to figure out who she is. Later, Mitchie uses her fake persona to strike up a relationship with Shane, who has no idea she is the girl with the voice he's been looking for, and they start falling in love. Shane comes out of his funk and is inspired start writing a new song, which just happens to be composed as musical counterpoint to one of Mitchie's songs.
From here, you can probably figure out the rest of the plot yourself. Tess, failing to attact Shane herself, gets jealous and figures out that Mitchie's been lying about her parents and exposes her in front of the whole camp, sabotaging her relationship with Shane, who blows up and rips Mitchie apart in front of everyone. Tess also figures out that Mitchie is the voice that Shane's been looking for, and frames Mitchie for stealing jewelry from her, getting Mitchie kicked out of Final Jam. Caitlyn and Mitchie make up, we're treated to the usual time-passing montage scene, and we arrive at Final Jam. First up is a hip-hop performance, followed by Tess' overproduced extravaganza. Her mom is in the audience but bails out of the performance to take a call on her cell phone, and Tess implodes and runs off stage mid-song. Peggy, her backup singer, comes on as a last minute replacement and sings a solo number with guitar. Then, after everyone thinks the show is over, Caitlyn and Mitchie come out and when Mitchie starts singing, Shane realizes he's the girl, they sing a duet, Tess realizes she's a bitch, apologizes, and everyone makes up before singing one more song.
From what I can tell, Camp Rock is extremely popular among the 'tween demographic, and it's not hard to see why. It's got the teen heartthrobs, the karaoke-friendly pop soundtrack, and it works on many levels. But it's deeply flawed on others.
For starters, this is a movie with the word "Rock" in the title, but there's no real rock music to be found. The manager of the camp talks about playing with Mick Jaggar and Aerosmith, but Disney apparently was too cheap to license a single actual rock song to play in the movie. What we're treated to instead are a number of High School Musical-style pop songs written by committee for the soundtrack. There's some other problems and inconsistencies musically. For one, not much of the music could even accurately be described as "rock" in the first place. Another problem is that some songs don't even make much sense in the context of the script. Mitchie's song, "This is Me", works as the big finale number, but the lyrics "this is real/this is me/this is exactly where I'm supposed to be/gonna let the light shine on me" just don't make sense at the beginning of the movie from a girl with no friends who's too shy to sing outside her bedroom.
In addition, Camp Rock sends some horrible messages to kids. Let's start at the beginning. First, the movie attempts to show that it's wrong to lie to make yourself cool, but we never see Mitchie's lying have any lasting consequences on her friendship with Caitlyn, and Caitlyn is even right there to comfort her when she gets exposed. There's barely any apology. It's basically "oh, you're lying, but we need to move the plot along so that's cool, no biggie." I don't know if this is supposed to be a lesson on forgiveness or just the writers being lazy. Even worse are the lessons taught by Mitchie and Shane's relationship. What we learn is that it's basically okay to lie to your boyfriend if he's the big rock star you're trying to impress. Conversely, it's okay for the guy to dump all over the girl, just as long as she doesn't have the great voice he's looking for. And if she does have the great voice, once again all the lying is okay because everything is fine in the end and most of the characters don't need to apologize for anything.
I guess it's just a shame that Disney couldn't do better than this with the script, because kids love Camp Rock and just eat it up while Disney takes it to the bank. Expect the sequel to get massive ratings in a couple of months. It's somewhat sad that this movie has such a bad message, because it could easily have been very good. There's really not much wrong with the acting or the direction; it's just a sub-par script. Regardless, kids will love it, and therein lies the problem: Disney could have made a much better movie, but didn't, because they don't have to. They'll make their money anyway.
In summary, Camp Rock is not a great movie, but not a bad one. Your kids will love it, even though the morals in High School Musical are better.
