(courtesy IMP Awards)
Full disclosure upfront: I am one of those consumers of pop culture in all kinds of forms who has never really listened to a Jonas Brothers song.
That’s not the result of snobbery or age – though I can safely say, without giving too much away, that I am likely not the core target demo for the band – simply not enough time to listen to all the new music coming in and also a sense that maybe their excellently done polished radio pop wasn’t an exact fit for my tastes.
Despite not being a rabid fan, or even a casual accidentally clicked on the wrong streaming playlist listener, the trailer for A Very Jonas Brothers Movie looked so upbeat, sweet and, yes, very, very funny, that including it on the 12 Days of SparklyPrettyBriiiightmas seemed like a complete no-brainer.
The gut instinct, I am happy to admit, absolutely paid off with the three brothers from Wyckoff, New Jersey serving up one of those old-fashioned, heart-and-soul Christmas movies with some self-deprecatory in-jokes and exaggerated personalities thrown in for good, knowing 21st century measure.
The A Very Jonas Brothers Movie centres around the boys attempts to get home for Christmas with Kevin and Nick’s wives and daughters, and Joe’s kids – also all girls; at one point, after Santa’s magic gold sky curtain has just sent wolves in a remote German forest packing (don’t question this; it all makes sense in the wider context of the film), Kevin makes a fun comment about his father’s genetics being to blame for the lack of Jonas sons (hilarious because, yes, he has four sons) – waiting at their respective homes for a festive reunion.
You’d think the family that tours together would celebrate Christmas together but the brothers are pretty much sick of the sight of each other and intend to scatter to the four winds, or three as the case may be, almost as soon as the plane hits the tarmac.
But an encounter by Joe, who’s sulking at a London bar when the two married brothers don’t want to go and celebrate the final show of the current leg of the tour, with a bearded man who looks a lot like Santa (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) – spoiler alert: he IS Santa; thought why he’s drinking in a pub in the UK is anyone’s guess just 48 hours before Christmas – throws a complete spanner in the works when he casts a spell that disrupts all their travel plans and which will only abate when the brother genuinely kiss and make up and act like brothers again.
Rather than speeding home on their private jet, which is mysteriously destroyed by lightning which appears like magic out of a cloudless sky, the fractious brothers are forced to take what transport options their hilariously unhinged, end of a relationship mourning travel agent, Cassidy (Billie Lourd) can find for them.
To start with, it looks like getting home won’t be too hard; sure they have to survive an unpredictable Uber ride to St. Pancras Station at the hands of a novice driver played by Andrea Martin who has decked her car out in a metric ton of tinsel and other decorations and who has quite got a hang of the fact that British people drive on the left side of the road.
But after some hilarious conversational banter – mostly from Martin who eats her scene up and then some, musing on why rice puddings are an overlooked dessert among other things – the boys make it to the station in the half hour before their to Paris departs, with the flight connection at Charles de Gaulle airport looking like a lock.
Until … well, things go wrong again, and The Jonas Brothers find themselves in Amsterdam, the only silver lining being that Joe reconnects with old childhood friend Lucy (Chloe Bennett) and discovers that he might be able to find romance again after his highly publicised split with ex-wife Sophie Turner (as part of the meta fun of A Very Jonas Brothers Movie, Lucy states the obvious as they’re having a romantic walk along a fairy light-lit canal and notes that it must be weird when everyone, including her, knows everything about Joe’s life).
As the trailer suggests, things keep going wrong again and again and again, and it looks very much like no one is getting home to their respective Christmases, although, of course, we know it’s all going to end happily one way or another.
A Very Jonas Brothers Movie is a fun-filled, joyously hilarious blast of a ride.
Filled to the fan and non-fan alike brim with jokes about the boys themselves, fame, celebrity, family dynamics and with a wry acknowledgement about the beautifully executed corniness of the plot, A Very Jonas Brothers Movie is perfect festive fare.
It has a slew of original songs by the Jonas Brothers, which slot neatly into the plot with all the precision of a finely-honed musical and which prove that you can indeed stage a big musical number in St Pancras Station at Christmas if literally all the passengers know how to sing and dance and pivot with dance professional precision around a suitcase, and which affirm how tuneful the band is.
That’s likely not a surprise to faithful fans but to this Jonas newbie, it’s a pleasing revelation; the songs are highly listenable, they don’t overstay their welcome and they add to the story rather than interrupting it or stopping it completely.
And when the tunes aren’t stealing the show, the jokes and cameo appearances are, with all kinds of quips, witty banter and a movie stealing performance by Will Ferrell as a Jonas Brothers super fan injecting buoyant, lively, festive fun into A Very Jonas Brothers Movie which has heart, comedy, cheesy Christmassy vibes and which restores fun to a genre that has not excelled this year and which needs a movie this good to make the most wonderful time of the year feel truly wonderful again.