Sunday, May 03, 2009

JONAS or the Poor Man's Monkees

In the Disney Channel vehicle for the Jonas Brothers, aptly titled JONAS, the brothers play pop stars who go to school, but don't hide their identity. I guess they didn't want the best of both worlds. The show borrows a lot from The Monkees in that the brothers live in a cool apartment and get into crazy situations and the scenes are interspersed with music videos. In the first episode, Nick falls hard for a girl in the way Davy Jones used to fall in love with a girl in every episode.

It's not necessarily a bad thing that the show is basically Monkees redux, but the quality of the show is not very good. I'm not saying that The Monkees was a masterpiece, but it was entertaining. The Jonas Brothers don't look very comfortable in front of the camera when they're not singing. I admire the decision not to use a laugh track, but it does create an awkward silence in certain points where you can imagine the laughs should be.

Given the fact that tweens will not watch anything that the Jonas Brothers are in, Disney better step its game up.

No comments: