No one in my household grew up on the Jonas Brothers. The only brothers in a band that my husband and I came up with were Liam and Noel Gallagher, and my kids, who are 12 and 7, completely missed the window when Nick, Kevin and Joe Jonas were teen heartthrobs with a hit TV show. And yet, I’m here to tell you that every person in my household loved the new Jonas Brothers movie, A Very Jonas Christmas Movie (out this weekend on Disney Plus), despite none of us necessarily being the target audience.
A Very Jonas Christmas Movie is probably the most generic title anyone could have given this film so it doesn’t really give you a clue about what you’re in for when you watch. In the very first scene, Will Ferrell shows up playing a heightened version of himself, and he’s forcing his family to attend a Jonas Brothers concert in London because he’s a massive superfan. “If my kids fell off a boat and you fell off a boat, I’d save you over my children!” Ferrell yells at the band while they’re performing in concert later in the film.
That scene sets the tone for what’s to come: A well-crafted, sharp road trip comedy that mines a lot of jokes from how uncool the Jonas brothers are now that they’re tired “old” dads in their 30s — with the brothers making most of the jokes at their own expense. I used to not relate to the Jonases, but I, too, am a tired parent who uses self-deprecation as a survival tool. Perhaps I have more in common with these former teen stars than I thought? It makes me forgive them for going with such a drab title.
The film begins at the final concert of the Jonas Brothers’ world tour, just a few days before Christmas. When the show ends, Nick, Joe and Kevin Jonas all plan to take their private jet from London to New York to see their families. However, the brothers haven’t been getting along, and when Joe has a chance encounter with Santa Claus (played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson) at a bar, Santa realizes that the Jonases need some time together to reconnect. So Santa does what you expect Santa to do, and puts a friendly curse on the brothers. Its first effect causes their airplane to explode before they can board it, forcing them to work together to find a way home. (This is not the only airplane in the film that will become a fireball, just so you know.)
What follows is a series of mishaps and a cavalcade of celebrity cameos, including K.J. Apa as a pilot, Andrea Martin as a cab driver who doesn’t really know how to drive, and Kenny G as himself (which I won’t spoil for you), as the brothers desperately try to get home, with Santa’s curse sabotaging them across every city in Europe.
Andrew Barth Feldman and Nick Jonas in A Very Jonas Christmas Movie
As a cynic (remember how I grew up with Oasis? Cynicism is my generation’s default setting), I wasn’t trying to be impressed with the lengthy list of cameos. Plenty of movies have tons of cameos, and they’re trash. But every celebrity in A Very Jonas Christmas Movie understands the assignment here: Go big or go home.
While Will Ferrell memorably kicks off the movie, one of the funniest moments comes when Nick Jonas runs into a (fictional) nemesis of his named Ethan, a child star Nick performed with in the Home Alone Broadway musical (also fictional, but I wish it were real). Actual Broadway actor Andrew Barth Feldman plays Ethan, and while he may not be the biggest celebrity name in the film, his performance with Nick, where they sing a fake song from Home Alone is funny on so many levels. Chloe Bennet, who starred in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and is a former teen pop star herself, has a starring role in the film, too. She not only showcases impressive singing skills during a duet with Joe, but she also forces the film to acknowledge that Joe’s love life has been tabloid fodder for years, and it’s addressed in a clever way that acknowledges it in a fictional setting. (It turns out, I’m not too old to know every last detail about Joe Jonas’s divorce from Game of Thrones star, Sophie Turner.)
Not surprisingly, the movie’s strength is the Jonases themselves. They perform several original, new, festive music numbers that are all incredibly catchy (and perform a live version of their single, Sucker, over the closing credits), and their impressive comedic abilities are on display in every scene. Kevin is often the butt of jokes for being the least charismatic performer of the family (a piece of “human cardboard” is how Nick puts it), but he owns that and turns it into some great comedy, while Joe’s romantic storyline allows him to show off the side of him that his brothers call “the lovable tramp.” The realistic sibling pet peeves and cheap shots between them feel genuine, but also like acknowledgements that they totally know what’s being said about their public personas — and now they’re in on the joke.
When you review movies, most of the time you’re asked to sign an embargo that doesn’t allow you to reveal details or plot spoilers, and the embargo for A Very Jonas Christmas Movie was one of the stricter ones I’ve had to agree too. Reviewers were asked not to share publicly that they even received advance screeners. It’s rare that I want to humblebrag about cool stuff I watch and do for work on social media (gotta keep it profesh) but the fact that I wasn’t allowed to discuss seeing the movie over the past couple weeks was hard because I literally wanted to tell as many people as possible to watch this movie when it comes out, it’s just so much fun. As much as I’ve tried to avoid the Jonases for the past 20 years because I assumed they weren’t my thing, well, the joke’s on me, ’cause I’ve been missing out. Turns out, these kids are talented!
Oh, and not for nothing, the movie ends when Santa, happy to have helped reestablish that Jonas brotherly love, rushes off because he needs to help another band in need … Oasis.
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