“I bet Dad is fan-girling lol.” This was the reaction of Daughter #1 from her college town way upstate to the news that Joe Jonas was a couple of tables over while her family unit dined at Arthur & Sons in Bridgehampton earlier this week.
Well, yes and no. It is true that I’m one of those middle-aged parents who at times enjoyed watching Disney made-for-TV movies with his kids a mite too much. One of them, for my money the best of them, being “Camp Rock 2,” from 2010.
There’s something about a story of a summertime sleepaway camp that touches the heart of those who never slept away. The wholesomeness. A sadness at having missed out over the course of a lost or misspent or not the greatest childhood.
It’s not exactly like that “Dirty Dancing” phenomenon of 1987, when certain women, maybe getting older, maybe disappointed in the romance department, helped themselves to repeated viewings of Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey cavorting in the Catskills midcentury. The mother of my best friend from college was one, returning for three dozen screenings.
My Disney sentiment may be a variant, however. Nostalgia could cover it, as the term was originally coined in the 17th century, referring to a longing for an idealized home, if not a past that never quite existed.
On the other hand, it wasn’t like it was Demi Lovato behind me, tucking into her eggplant stack. That would have made my head swivel.
Because “Camp Rock 2” is a musical, one that climaxes in a kind of battle of the bands between two rival summer camps, one cooler, swaggering, full of attitude, the other welcoming and blessed, or afflicted, with sincerity.
But the emotional heart of the thing is a duet by Jonas and Lovato, “Wouldn’t Change a Thing,” each starting out in separate cabins after sundown, complaining about the other (she: “It’s like he doesn’t hear a word I say”; he: “She’s always trying to save the day”), and culminating around a campfire, interpersonal laments expressed but unresolved.
Jonas gamely hangs on while Lovato knocks it out of the park.
In a twist, the “good” camp loses the showdown concert competition, but the way it turns out the cool kids slowly ditch their cynicism and start trickling over to where it’s nicer, and we take our leave of the happy campers jumping in a lake en masse.
Sweet. You might even say inexplicably moving.