From left: Kevin Jonas, Nick Jonas, and Joe Jonas perform in Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
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Mom: Do you think the Jonas Bros. have a nice life?
S: No. They have everything anybody could want but they never get to use it. And everybody's looking up to them — what if you did something wrong? So many people would get mad at you. Also, it seemed like they hardly ever got to see their parents.
G: I think they have a nice life.
S: Would you like to get up that early?
G: Besides that...
S: Besides that! If you made a mistake in front of all those people wouldn't you be embarrassed and cry?
G: I'd just keep going.
S: What if they booed?
G: The Jonas Brothers would never get booed.
Mom: Which Jonas Brother would you be?
S: Nick.
G: Nick has Jay-oh-one diabetes.
Mom: Juvenile diabetes?
S: No he doesn't. He just pretends to have it for the ad.
G: I'd be Joe.
S: That's just because he's the most famous. I don't want to be famous. You have to do so many hard things.
G: I know you do. You have to get really sweaty on stage. But I still want to be famous.
S: The movie was too long.
G: It was long, but there were good songs.
S: But it was better than Coraline.
G: Oh, it was three times better than Coraline.
Mom: Ginger, you said High School Musical 3 was better than Christmas. Was this better than Christmas too?
G: No but it was better than Easter.
S: No it wasn't. It was better than Lent.
—Belinda Luscombe
A Critic's Take: The Jonas Brothers' Hard Day's Night
Coming in to Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, I knew nothing about the guitar-popsters except that they wear promise rings and the middle one is cute. But I didn't begrudge what tween America feels for the group, because I do know this: Kids need to love things. And when they find something, they love it to pieces. The world is so fresh, their attention so intense, that any object they fix on — a toy, a TV show, the Harry Potter books, a new friend — becomes an object of the deepest, most transporting obsession, the purest form of first love. Anyone who was ever a child knows this; we all went through it.
Walt Disney knew this, and built his empire on it. His early, primal animated features mined infant emotions of fear, loss and reconciliation, and branded the Disney name on their receptive brains. On '50s TV, The Mickey Mouse Club and Disneyland sold young viewers not just a theme park but a sanitized ideal of childhood. Walt also sold them friends: cartoon characters you could pack your school lunch in, fall asleep with or wear on your wrist. (The marketing genius of the Mickey Mouse watch cannot be overstated.)
More than 40 years after Walt's death, his successors at the Disney Channel haven't forgotten how to fashion/manipulate/stoke/corrupt/enhance the young imagination. They've made culture-spanning franchises of High School Musical, Hannah Montana and the Jonases: on TV and CDs, in concert and on the movie screen. Early box office returns for the Jonas boys' movie indicate they're not yet in the Miley Cyrus empyrean. JB 3D, which analysts had said would gross $30-40 million, took in just $4.8 million on Friday, for a projected $15-18 million weekend total. Compare that with the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour movie, which earned $31 million its opening weekend a year ago, and in fewer theaters. As movie stars, the brothers are lukewarm, not red hot. But with a TV series starting this fall, they should remain the favorite boy band of 8-year-olds at least through the recession.
I was ready to indulge the fans of Kevin, 21, Joe, 19, and Nick, 16 — I've now learned the Jonases' names and ages — because I can recall another pop band that had a little impact. Back in 1964, the Beatles made the same four-media triumph in the U.S.: on records, on The Ed Sullivan Show, with their film A Hard Day's Night and on an American concert tour. When I caught them, in Philadelphia's Town Hall (honest, I was an infant back then), they could have been a mime troupe, so helpless was their music against the sonic shield of the audience's screams.
In a story commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Fab Four's conquest of America, I detailed the initial mainstream U.S. response: that they were a passing fancy, that their music was derivative, and that the funniest thing about them were their haircuts. It was the last gasp of an adult establishment that felt secure in dismissing anything new, scorning anything young; and the Beatles were both. (George Harrison, when he and his mates made their Sullivan debut, was younger than Kevin Jonas is now.) In the intervening decades, the mainstream has learned its lesson: not to deride what kids love but to embrace and exploit it. Just like Disney.