By [Spoiler Alert][This is not a review]
Payola promoted, Disney-produced, beautified trio, also known as The Jonas Brothers star along with Demi Lovato in this General Audience, all ages admitted, TV Camp Rock.
Camp Rock as a film explores shyness and creative honesty, pompous egotistical personalities and profit driven compromises in art or the actual result of that process, plain entertainment.
Demi Lovato wakes from bed to a dream where Disney’s intellectual properties combine Cinderella with the Little Mermaid within a musical universe where things only go wrong when there is a lesson to be learnt. Youngsters certainly unaware that Raise Your Voice, released only four years before, tells basically the same story with a different skin.
Joe Jonas plays as the Prince, a spoiled rockstar on a downward spiral away from happiness. Demi Lovato, from now on known as Mermerella, for illustrative purposes, and the Prince have something in common even if their lives are far away from ea
[Spoiler Alert][This is not a review]
Payola promoted, Disney-produced, beautified trio, also known as The Jonas Brothers star along with Demi Lovato in this General Audience, all ages admitted, TV movie: Camp Rock.
Camp Rock as a film explores shyness and creative honesty, pompous egotistical personalities and profit driven compromises in art or the actual result of that process, plain entertainment.
Demi Lovato wakes from bed to a dream where Disney’s intellectual properties combine Cinderella with the Little Mermaid within a musical universe where things only go wrong when there is a lesson to be learnt. Youngsters certainly unaware that Raise Your Voice, released only four years before, tells basically the same story with a different skin.
Joe Jonas plays as the Prince, a spoiled rockstar on a downward spiral away from happiness. Demi Lovato, from now on known as Mermerella, for illustrative purposes, and the Prince have something in common even if their lives are far away from each other.
The Camp Rock, a summer course specialized in music, all disciplines accepted, is a hub and platform for future stars of the musical scene; its students, flamboyant by nature, accurate depiction of their real life counterparts, dedicate their weeks on the camp to spread their plumages as the peacocks they are.
But even amongst a swarm of peacocks there is always a dominant one. Picture perfect, white and blond, Meaghan Martin plays as Ursula, queen bee, daughter of a music star, is the concocted character to antagonize our innocent and pure Mermerella.
The Prince, intervened right at the start of his path to self-destruction, pushed by his bandmates, two mere carcasses of characters, that we will call the doppelgängers, is sent to Camp Rock to rediscover his roots away from the cosmopolitan doped greed of the Holy Wood.
Hiding from a group of crazed idolizers, the Prince camouflaged with the bushes hears a divine voice filled with inspiration and sentiment that will haunt him from now on. When he enters the building to discover the source of the charming chant, it is too late as he is all alone.
Mermerella, insecure, self conscious and with low self esteem, is ashamed of the fact that her incursion to Camp Rock is only possible because of her mom, MILF extraordinaire and cook that received a discount for serving the food to all the Camp Rockers. On this train of thought, Mermerella has her first encounter with Ursula, pressured by self loathing, she invents a fake persona, built around her superficial desires, and tells Ursula she is rich and powerful and hence a ticket is handed to her to join the plastics. Yet not everything is pink within this clique, Ursula, ignored by her mother, irradiates this pain as anger towards her lemmings.
Gradually, Ursula considers Mermerella a threat as our innocent girl shares her talent with the camp and also enchants the guest rock star. As a result, in the middle of the arch of our protagonists, where the Prince once a demigod, now rencountered with humbleness and artistic purpose, Mermerella, slowly detaching herself from the queen bee after realizing the ridiculousness of the façade, Ursula, now aware of her secret, attacks after a musical presentation from Prince and the Doppelgängers, by exposing her in front of everyone, the Prince, listening behind her, suffers a melodramatic outburst after hearing the truth as betrayal and deception overwhelm him.
Climax comes with the Final Jam, an extravagant contest inside a full-fledged stage, public in full hysteria. Behind the stage, the plastics melt, disruption strikes between them ending with the dissolution of the group, forcing Ursula to perform without them, yet during the actual concert, Ursula’s mother makes an appearance only to ignore her spawn in the middle of her performance, the daughter, distracted and crushed, is rendered incapable of completing the song and escapes from the spotlight to find a dark and lonely corner to cry out the sensation of emptiness as her existence was not validated by the only person that really mattered to her.
The story is interrupted when a former member of the plastics takes the spotlight and the viewer is awarded with two minutes of awkwardness by a singer with little stage presence that ultimately wins the Final Jam.
An encore then comes with a special presentation by Demi Lovato, the Prince turn his head excited by the revelation of the angelic voice that through her lyrics shares her naked soul, a thing our Prince wanted to do since the beginning, an intent that got lost with the corruption of the ego that fame brings to every person.
Ursula, gone through the catharsis, is enlightened, so now cleansed, seeks redemption with apologies and by finally recognizing her friends.
Technically, the movie hides its budget with a dark and muddy picture and its inherent over-saturated colors, cinematography is merely functional, the acting, passable with some dreadful exceptions, specially the travesty of the doppelgängers, not giving one convincing line. Demi Lovato, irrefutable outstanding singer, as an actress lacks a proper range casting her mad-magazine-like grin for every situation.
However this is not for us the Flixists, cinema curious, film explorers; this is a simple movie for kids, about music, that tries to deliver a simple message and also seeks to hype its own products, and as that, it is everything it can be.