We're coming up to the end of Summer here in the UK, well, what little summer we had anyway... and I feel I need to get those Summer movies out of my system so I can really hit the ground running with Halloween month next month (and boy I have got some great shit lined up!) so on that aforementioned tangent; this week's Disney Week and DCOM (Disney Channel Original Movie if you haven't been keeping up) is the lazily titled; Teen Beach Movie. Presumably a movie, about a beach frequented mostly by teenagers. Something I think you'll agree would just be out of place if covered in October, November, December, January e.t.c. I am uhh... not looking forward to this. I just know in advance I am going to hate it. But it seems to have scored well on IMDB and was generally well received so... maybe it'll win me over? Like Thirteenth Year did? Let's see.
Immediately it looks like the film revolves around 'Wet Side Story' - a Surfer Biker parody of, I presume West Side Story, which I hope isn't a major deal because I haven't actually seen West Side Story before now... Brady (Ross Lynch) and his girlfriend McKenzie \ Mack (Maia Mitchell) just get done spending all day surfing and generally being all coupley, when Brady learns from her stuck up Aunt that she; Mack is going away to prep school tomorrow. Brady's day gets even better when Mack declares, because she is travelling away, they have to break up. So that's the end of that I guess. On the morning of the trip, Mack can't resist just one more surf in crazy high waves before she has to go, but when the weather turns worse and Mack refuses to come back in land, Brady rushes out to rescue her only for the both of them to be swept beneath the waves. Emerging from the waves to a suddenly very clear day, the pair are horrified to learn they are in A REALLY CHEESY DISNEY MUSICAL SET ON A BEACH! OH GOD! But uhh, seriously, no, they appear to be in 'Wet Side Story' now. Oh god. Why do I do this to myself. So after a painful musical number Brack... HA! I actually typed that by accident but I'm keeping it now... Brack get hustled into a shack; Big Momma's but just when the bubblegum surfers suddenly turn on them, in burst The Rodents; the Bikers and mortal enemies of the Surfers... and the Bikers all have Brooklyn accidents for... some reason... and OH GOD another song. This is a musical isn't it. Actually... that wasn't that bad, but the Bikers are all black, leather, chains, and rock music so I guess I feel more at home. But somebody that doesn't feel at home is Mack; who freaks out and wants to get back before she misses her flight. Surmising that the storm brought them here, Brady says they just have to make it to the end of the movie; because there is another storm then and that's maybe how they'll get home? However later at a dance, things go terribly wrong when Brady and Mack, sorry, Brack, when Brack's being in this world disrupts the 2 main characters; Tanner (Garrett Clayton... who looks so much like Dave Franco I honestly thought it was him...) and Lela (Grace Phipps) from meeting each other and falling in love! Instead inserting themselves between them when Tanner falls for Mack and Lela literally falls into Brady's arms instead. Realising they've massively fucked up the movie continuity Brack rushes to "the Camembert hideout" which looks alot like a lighthouse to me, because originally, the big storm at the end is caused by the destruction of a weather machine being built by comically over-the-top stereotypical British villain Les Camembert (Steve Valentine) who drinks from the same cup and saucer from a tea set my mother owns... no really. His plan; to drastically alter the weather and the climate so that the beach; and therefore Big Momma's shack will be deserted. What a wanker. It's there that it dawns on the pair that since Tanner and Lela didn't fall in love, the chain of events leading to the storm caused by the machines destruction won't happen... Brack decide that the only way to fix things is to deflect the respective romantic attention they're receiving from Tanner and Lela away and towards the respective other person, but that goes terribly at first, and tension between Brack begins to show when, Brady seems to be enjoying things, but Mack is so desperate to get home. However there is finally a breakthrough when Lela confides in Mack that she wants to learn to surf. Spotting an opportunity Mack suggests she get Brady to teach her but her plan is foiled when Camembert tests his machine, and suddenly there is no surf. Then things begin to get even worse as Mack can't stop herself bursting into song for another musical number... UGH... a sure fire sign that they're slowly becoming saturated within the movie world. But whilst the musical number is happening Tanner and Lela bump into each other and hit it off when they release they have so much in common. Back on the beach Brack run into trouble when they are confronted by Les Camembert and his mad Scientist pal; Dr. Fusion (Kevin Chamberlin) who are honestly the best thing about this movie, and both are taken back to the "Camembert hideout"... why is he named after a cheese?... Tanner and Lela, who at this point seem to have fallen for each other and have therefore proven Tobar's Model, realise something has gone wrong and head back to Big Momma's where, after an impassioned speech about working together rally the Bikers and the Surfers to stop Camembert. Back in the Lighthouse... sorry, hideout... Mack comes to the conclusion that she doesn't want to go away to prep school and instead wants to stay and be with Brady but not before she has to sing about it first... oh god. Anyway, the gang storms the hideout, Brack get rescued, there's a big musical bit, and the villains are defeated. Making the decision that they have to go back Brack say their goodbye to the gang and surf into the storm, and emerge from the wash right back where they started from with not a second even passed. Mack finally gets to ride a huge wave like she wanted to right at the beginning and after returning to shore tells her Aunt she's decided she wants to stay, with her Aunt reluctantly agreeing with her, and then the movie manages to squeeze in another song and dance part because why not?
This blog, and the running there of is changing me people. CHANGING ME. Mid-twenties me would look down condescendingly and smirk... probably whilst holding a beer... at anyone who might even hint at potentially enjoying something so cheesy, so corny, so outright cringey as this movie. But. But. I made a promise to myself going into this blog last year that I would be honest and upfront about my opinion after watching a movie, and not bag on a movie just because it's cool to do so or whatever. And, don't hate me, but... this wasn't that bad... I mean, for a musical. I hate musicals, but discounting all the cringe songs that I didn't care for, everything else... was mostly alright. Mostly.
I honestly thought this was going to be a really cringey, really cheesy, really overacted teenage movie about surfers falling in love or other such puke inducing stuff or whatever and well, it kinda was, but the movie was actually so self aware that they dialled up the overacting and the clichés and the cheesiness to the next level; the characters are all so rigidly stereotypical; the airhead but handsome jock, the damsel in distress (sorta), the comically evil supervillian; he's British, drinks tea and has a pencil moustache, because of course he does, it actually... worked really well. It could have taken itself really seriously and tried to pull it off non-ironically, but instead the movie just went full on bonkers with it all, under the premise is was a movie within a movie, because they could get away with it and it actually kinda worked.
The songs were... not for me... I was almost nearly into the Biker Rock & Roll song near the very beginning, but I'm not about to download it and put it on my phone or anything. I am not into musicals. Not even a little bit. It is not my scene. So I guess I'm mega biased, and maybe if you are, you can dig the songs but they didn't work for me. I don't think they're necessarily that bad... they're typical cheesy, inoffensive love songs, but they are nothing special either.
The acting, however, is potentially the best I've seen in a DCOM yet, Maia Mitchell does a good job as Mack in the lead and as an authoritative female role model. Ross Lynch as Brady was a tiny bit wooden in spots, but for the most part was pretty decent. I said it earlier but by far and away the best bit about this movie was the ridiculously over the top bad guys; Steve Valentine as Les Camembert and Kevin Chamberlain as Dr. Fusion. They were just hilarious, and genuinely made me laugh. They should have been in this thing a whole lot more.
I was also... impressed... I think is the word with the underlying message of the movie; of female empowerment and not letting your gender define you, or letting yourself be defined by the opposite gender. These Disney Channel movies obviously always have to pack an important developmental message going into them, that's sorta the whole Disney thing... but this was a positive message and one I can appreciate, and here, it was maybe laid on a bit too thick in places, but largely was consistent enough throughout the film to demonstrate why it's a positive attitude.
The general storyline, was actually surprisingly fresh. And clever in spots; the underlying sub-plot being that by being present in the movie world the 2 main characters were changing and affecting the timeline was quite clever, I mean sure it's been done before a number of times but to stage it within the development of a movie plot and have them being present disrupt the movie plot was quite clever, at least to me, maybe it's been done in a massive Hollywood blockbuster I haven't watched or something, but I appreciated it. And that point aside, just the whole narrative; about the characters trying to fix things so they could get home, rather than it just being another cheesy teen romance film was a big sigh of relief for me. And it was written cleverly enough that when I thought a bit was going to be predictable, they twisted it slightly so that what I thought was going to happen didn't. They could have lazied out but they didn't, some genuine thought and attention was obviously put into this movie and the results show.
Everything else gets little to no complaints from me, for a straight-to-TV movie, the cinematography was pretty high standard and most of the movie was shot really well with only the odd surfing scene looking massively out of place, but I can't decide if that was because it was intentional, IE: part of the movie within the movie, or if they were just cutting corners budget wise, other than that everything else was shot fine, even the dance scenes, which seemed well choreographed were shot really well. And I've picked up on how the songs weren't for me earlier, but they at least fitted the narrative; about finding somebody else and falling in love, so if not to my taste, they at least matched the theme.
I genuinely thought going into this it was going to be so painfully awful that I was in for a long night. It's honestly half the reason it made my Disney+ watchlist in the first place... and as I continue to explore the bizarre enigma that is the Disney Channel Original Movie scene I'm slowly learning that what I expected to be a collection of embarrassingly low budget, corny over acted, under developed camp of movies are actually some competently produced, interesting and quirky films with some decent acting and some genuinely good storytelling. I'm starting to feel like I got the wrong impression, and maybe I should have expected more from anything Disney is willing to write it's name all over. I guess that's half the point of the journey. If I don't take away anything from this at the end, then what was even the point? But uh, so far, my picks - which are intentionally supposed to be some of the lesser appreciated ones, have not been half bad. And honestly, neither was this. It's with almost astonished respect that I think I'm going to score this with a 3 out of 5...
