Happy Halloween

I recognize most of the costumes and about half of the kids in this photo, but am left with one very important question:



What exactly is David Henrie dressed up as? A douchey dudebro? I'm starting to worry we may need a "douchey pictures of David Henrie" category around here, alas.

Source.

The Wizards Movie: Who Knew?

So. Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie. Here are four short words I never thought I'd find myself typing, unqualified and unironically, in a review of a DCOM -- let alone a DCOM based on one of Disney's kidcoms:

It was pretty good.

Not "it was an infuriating waste of my time, or "cute cast, terrible movie," or even "it was enjoyably bad."

It was pretty good! Like, actually good in the way that you want a movie to be!


The two-second summary: Alex and her mother are fighting non-stop during their family vacation, and Alex makes a thoughtless, angry wish that her parents had never met. Of course it comes true, and now she, Justin, and Max only have two days to get find the Stone of Dreams, a magical artifact that can grant (or in this case, reverse) any wish.

Basically, this movie is what would happen if you threw Goonies, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Back to the Future, and It's a Wonderful Life into a blender: treasure maps, mysterious booby traps, characters who disappear because history has been altered, and a revelation of just how good life really is. But, while the action adventure sequences are fine (unlike the regular series, the effects aren't laughably bad; but they're nothing to write home about, either), what ultimately sets it apart as probably the best DCOM I can think of is the fact that it's a well constructed story. There's only one movie in the movie (something DCOMs aren't alone in screwing up; a lot of recent tween and teen movies have tried to shoehorn two, three, or in some cases seven plots into one movie, *cough*CampRock*cough*). There are some bits that don't really make sense (they make the rule that the kids will forget things, but for most of the movie, only Max does, and then he disappears; Justin forgets things all at once, two seconds before he disappears) or were never followed through with (what exactly had Giselle the parrot done to earn her punishment, and why did the street magician guy go off with her at the end, after she'd been so horrible to him?).

But the plot was smooth enough that it didn't take away from the actual important part: the interpersonal relationships.

Whoa, I never thought I would type that about a DCOM, either. But it's true!

The movie does several things well at the character level: for one thing, you can see how the kids get their personalities from their parents, in an "I learned by watching you!" sort of way. The most obvious example is Max, when he's hanging out with his now-single, still-magic-possessing father. Generally, Max is an immature joker -- and now we see, so's his dad! And without hammering the point too hard, Max learns what a pain that can be to deal with by spending time with his dad.

Better still, the kids (especially Alex) relate to their parents the way actual teenagers do. Every fight Alex had with her mom impressed me, because they didn't seem at all contrived; yeah, magic, whatever, but other than that, they were fights that a lot of teenage girls do have with their mothers.

But, because I am a sucker for such things (and because, let's face it, Selena and D-Hen are the best things about the show), it was the surprisingly depth to the relationship between Alex and Justin that got me and knocked the movie up from "fine" to "pretty good" territory. In the regular series, we see that Alex is a slacker who's perfectly good at magic, but doesn't care enough to try. And we see Justin is a neurotic nerd. And we know that they don't generally get along. It turns out, all of these things have motivations! Justin is desperate for his parents' approval, and thinks that being super-smart is the only way he can earn it. Alex sees that his parents do approve of that, but thinks that she can never live up to his example, so she refuses to even try. Justin is sick of getting in trouble because of Alex. Alex is sick of Justin being a know-it-all. They fight because of all of these things, and through the course of the movie, they gain empathy for one another, they make it clear that beneath it all, they really care about each other, and it's kind of. Um. Touching. And not in a bad-touch way.

You guys, a DCOM had character depth in a way that made sense and drove the plot along and made me care about things! What madness is this? And if Disney can actually find competent people to write and direct things, why don't they do it more often????

Look: the movie wasn't perfect. When I said it seemed like someone had stuck those four movies in a blender, I wasn't joking; there's leaning heavily on movie tradition, and then there's borderline plagiarism, and this movie is much closer to the latter. Nothing about it was especially original, or strikingly brilliant. But (given the source material, and the quality of basically all other DCOMs), it was better than it had any right to be, and even removing the context of the Wizards series and the tradition of DCOMs making no sense, you're left, well… A movie that was pretty good.

No.

No.

NO.

The shirttails, and the crooked tie, and the shiny pants, and the hat, and the...

No. NO.

A Saturday Night Watching "Wizards on Deck With Hannah Montana"

So the thing is, my sister Rachel does not care about the Disney Channel or tween things. Really. That's why she was the one who initially talked me into watching HSM, and why she watched Camp Rock with us last summer, and why she not only Tivoed Princess Protection Program when I forgot to do it, but actually watched it. And why she TiVoed "Wizards on Deck With Hannah Montana" for me.

So now I am making her watch it! Fun times.

-Alex has dropped from 10 assignments behind to 14 assignments behind in science
Rachel: They only get one assignment a week?

-Justin: "It's ironic that the person who likes school the least…Has to go the most!"
Becky: I like that Gay Older Brother is kind of a dick.

- Parents: "We'll make you go and see all the fun they're having, and then you'll feel bad about yourself! … That's good parenting, right?"
Becky: It's still better than the mom on "The Suite Life."

-Justin: "Look, it's from the teen cruise contest I wrote an essay for!"
Rachel: "Watch while I casually exposit!"

Aboard the SS Tipton…
-Moseby: *is wearing shorts and knee socks*
Both of us: Aaaaaaah!

-Slightly Better Sprouse: *is wearing skinny jeans*
Both of us: Aaaaaaaaaaah!

-Alex: *casts a spell*
Becky: Did she just rhyme "here" with "here"? And why is that an elevator to take them to shore?

-Youngest Russo: "It's one of those clocks for people on to tell the time in their bodies!"
Rachel: Is he brain damaged? Like, actually?

-Slightly Worse Sprouse: "So I hear you're randomly taking people's blood pressure. I'm Zack."
Rachel: That is the best introduction ever.

-Alex: "Ashley Olsen. I can remember that. Ashley… Oh, no. Oh, well!"
Rachel: I think all the Russo children are brain dead!

-Justin: *spit takes*
-London: "That's how you know you're full!"
Rachel: There is no explanation for that line.

Becky: So basically, youngest Russo is just Zack Martin.
Rachel: But somehow dumber.

-Justin: "I'm gonna dump her."
-Alex: "Can I watch?"
-Justin: "I'm not. Going. To cry."
Rachel: Wow, he's a much better actor than this show really calls for.

-Justin: "Would you… Would you go out with a guy who worked in a sandwich shop, and wrote… Stories, and essays…"
Rachel: And fanfic, I'm guessing?

-Not!Tizz (Bailey): *wears horrible yellow pants*
Rachel: OW, MY EYES!

-SBS: *wears white skinny jeans*
Rachel: REALLY????

Rachel: Is it D-Hen's only job to walk around saying angry things? Because I will actually watch that show.

-Miley: *wears purple satin pants*
Rachel: How are EVERYONE'S PANTS worse than the last pair I saw?

-Justin: *takes his shirt off*
Becky: I find the fact that D-Hen is actually ripped really disconcerting.
-Justin: *is now covered in blue*
Rachel: You could just take off the latex suit.

-Justin: "This is Alex, I know my sister!"
-Moseby: "This is Zack, I know my hooligan!"
Becky: Awww, Zack is his hooligan.

-The show: *makes no sense*
Rachel: It's sort of like a middle school play.

-Zack: "Isn't there something you'd like to say to me? That rhymes with 'I'm … florry?'"
-Moseby: "You're flannoying?"
Rachel: I thought he was going to say, "You're a bad rhymer."

-Youngest Russo: "I'm never going to wash that cheek again."
Rachel: What, no "You've never washed that cheek before!" joke? How do you miss that beat?!

-"Hannah Montana" episode: *is unwatchably boring*
Becky: Why is the Hannah Montana episode so much less manic? And more dull?
-Suite Life characters: *all enter*
Becky: That actually improves things.
Rachel: Where did the Wizard kids go?

-Zack: "I've got chocolate shirtcake!"
-Hannah: "I don't like chocolate."
-Zack: "That's okay. I've got vanilla in my pants pocket…"
Rachel: SO INAPPROPRIATE, OMG.

Rachel: Who's that other kid? … Wait, that's Oliver in a stupid wig. Why so many stupid wigs on this show?

Rachel: I like how it's clear Billy Ray just couldn't be bothered to go to the set to film and that's why all of his scenes are in bed.

-Not!Tizz: "Did you do this?"
-Cody: "Bailey, if this relationship doesn't have honesty, it doesn't have anything. … Yes, I did."
Rachel: See, it's funny because he's lying to his girlfriend.

Becky: Well… that was dull.
Rachel: Instead of going wacky, they tried for pathos. On "Hannah Montana."

In conclusion…

Rachel: So Slightly Better Sprouse is dead in the middle of his awkward phase, huh?
Becky: For five years now.

The end!

Floss!

Warning: Spoilers below!

Here at Tweenage, we love Emily Osment, Phil Lewis, Jason Earles, and David Henrie (and can theoretically tolerate Moises Arias when he’s not playing the despicable Rico on Hannah Montana), so we were very excited about Dadnapped. We shouldn’t have been.

Dadnapped is about a girl (Emily) whose horrible father is a hugely famous writer, best known for a series of books about a teen James Bond character named Trip Zoome. Yeah, I know. This wasn’t terribly clear in the movie, but apparently the horrible father used to be a dentist? And Trip…is also one? Maybe? So his catchphrase is “Floss!” which…is idiotic.

Anyway, Emily and her (divorced) horrible dad are going off on a camping trip that Emily has been stoked for for weeks, but in Horrible Dad’s life, Trip comes first, so they have to stop at a Trip Zoome convention before the camping can begin. Horrible Dad brings a life-sized cardboard cutout of Trip on the trip (ha!) with them (and are these movies, too? Who is this boy who is the face of Trip Zoome? It’s not clear), and Emily is so frustrated with Trip’s place in her father’s heart that she has conversations with the cardboard cutout, which becomes sassier and less tied to its cardboard identity as the movie goes on. I actually thought this was a really interesting, ambitious concept, but everyone else in the room hated it (I’m also the only one who liked the movie’s title). It’s okay. There’ll be plenty of things we all agreed to hate together later.

So there’s this contest at the convention: whoever creates a Trip gadget with the most accuracy wins a cameo in the next Trip book. This is basically an excuse for all the lunatics at the convention to engage in a lot of insane slapstick stunts while Emily rolls her eyes. Man, people who read are so weird and nerdy! But the people who take it way too far are David Henrie, his little brother Moises, and their wacky black friend who doesn’t do anything, because that is how DCOMs roll. They actually kidnap Horrible Dad, which is a problem for Phil Lewis and his inexplicably white brother, the Poor Man’s Janitor from Scrubs, because they also want to kidnap Horrible Dad.

Emily takes off to rescue Horrible Dad with the help of Jason Earles, the hotel manager, and let me just say, Disney, that if you want to maintain the illusion that Jason Earles is a teenager and not 30something so that he can keep playing Jackson on Hannah Montana, you can’t also use him in movies where he plays a grownup. Like, we were all aware watching this movie that the man is not seventeen and is in fact old as the hills, but it was still unsettling. It’s gonna weird kids out.

So Emily and Jason Earles, and Phil Lewis and the PMJFS, are trailing D-Hen, Moises, and Wacky Black Friend, while Horrible Dad tries to convince them to let him go back to the con. They refuse, because they think that the more they torture Horrible Dad, the more likely he is to put them in his book. There is something wrong with their brains. Then he points out that all the Trip Zoome books they’re using as reference are overdue library books, and they are shocked - shocked! - to discover that library books can be overdue and they can charge you fines. Even though at least D-Hen is, like, 17. And wouldn’t diehard Trip fans own the books, anyway?

So they rush off to the library to return the books (oh noes, a nickel-a-day fine, their kryptonite!), and Horrible Dad decides to show them a Trip trick instead of, you know, returning to the convention or assuring his daughter that he’s all right. They cut out the inside of a book (because libraries want you to pay fines for late books, but they’re totally cool with you destroying the books inside the library) and place a mousetrap (no, I don’t know where they got it from) inside it, rigged with some blue goo, with Horrible Dad explaining that the next librarian who opens it will get a nasty surprise. It was at this point that Becky’s sister Rachel reminded us that librarians and dentists have been feuding for centuries, so this totally made sense.

Emily enters the library, sees them putting the book on the shelf and then hiding (because they apparently believe that out of all of the books in the entire library, a librarian will chose that one to open right away), and rather than go get her stupid dad and return to the convention, she decides to open the book – and gets a faceful of blue goo. Horrible Dad laughs his ass off, because he’s horrible. It’s cool, though, the minute she walks out of the library the goo is gone.

Horrible Dad follows her out, and this is where Phil Lewis and the PMJFS make their play, forcing Horrible Dad into their van by threatening him with a stapler. Seriously, a stapler. Emily, loath to lose her dad again, sticks her wrist in the cuffs they’re putting on him, handcuffing them together. (Which hand is handcuffed to which, whether they’re handcuffed together or separately, and whether they’re handcuffed at all will not be remotely consistent for the rest of the movie. Just FYI.) Then they both get into the van, despite the fact that their kidnappers can do no more than yell “Get in the van!” and wave a stapler at them.

Phil Lewis and the PMJFS’s brilliant plan? The PMJFS has written a terrible book, and they want Horrible Dad to edit/ghost write it. At gunstaplerpoint. Yes. I’ll just let you mull over that stupidity for a moment.

Meanwhile, D-Hen, Moises, and Wacky Black Friend try to rescue them, but their van breaks, I forget why. But Emily leaves a clue for them in a gas station restroom – a page from a Trip Zoome book, with the word “presidential” circled in lip gloss. They’re going back to the hotel, where they’re staying in the Presidential Suite. Because the best place to hide a famous author is in a hotel hosting a convention of his fans. Yep.

As they travel around with their incompetent kidnappers, Emily and Horrible Dad have it out. She asks why he’s never put her in any of his books, which is the wrong question to ask, but whatever (try “Why don’t you ever have time for me?” or “Why is your career more important than your own daughter?” or “How can you possibly be so horrible, Horrible Dad?”). He tells her that the characters in his books are nothing like her – they’re dynamic, accomplished, interesting people. He actually says this! And doesn’t know why she starts crying! Then he’s pretty much shocked that she knows how to read. So horrible, Horrible Dad! Emily accuses him of not knowing anything about her, yelling at him that he doesn't even know she won a local writing contest. He gets all proud and asks her, "You like writing? You won a contest?" but, crying angrily, she says, "Two years in a row, Dad." An actual well-written, well-acted emotional moment! Good job, Ems!

It turns out that Jason Earles is part of this whole plan. Shocker! (Not really.) Also, his private suite is pretty much the gayest Disney Channel living quarters since Cody moved into the closet on The Suite Life. Shocker! (Still not really.) He doesn’t give a shit about the PMJFS’s book, of course; he just wants a manuscript by Horrible Dad that he can market as Horrible Dad’s last book – after he kills Horrible Dad. Of course, it would make much more sense to simply steal the next Trip Zoome manuscript, but this is the Disney Channel.

Somehow, possibly through telepathy, Emily has conveyed some Triptastic (yes, they use that word) plot to D-Hen that involves…all of the fans dressing up weird and filling squirt guns with goo? Jason locks her in the bathroom, so she uses various bathroom supplies to write a giant Z on the shower curtain and hangs it out the window, which is somehow the signal, even though she didn’t know she’d be locked in the bathroom. The fans start yelling, and when Jason sticks his head out the window, they all shoot him with the most powerful squirt guns in the world and cover him with goo.

Of course, this means that the kidnappers have to flee the hotel, because goo! They grab Horrible Dad and Emily, but every time they try to exit, fans squirt them with more goo! Including Horrible Dad and Emily, because the fans aren’t terribly discriminating! Finally, Jason has been squirted with so much goo that he gives up. No, I don’t understand it either.

Also, somewhere in here Horrible Dad tells Emily that Trip Zoome is based on her. Even though he already explicitly stated that she is not in his books because she is boring to him. NO, I DON’T UNDERSTAND IT EITHER.

Back at the convention, Horrible Dad awards D-Hen, Moises, and Wacky Black Friend the prize. D-Hen and Emily exchange numbers, and Emily and Horrible Dad head off to go camping. Hooray!

I read a lot about good production values on this movie, and you know, they were pretty good. And the acting wasn’t bad, especially since they cherry-picked almost all of the better actors of their flagship shows. And the basic premise of "bad father learns to be less bad, and gets to know his daughter via wacky hijinks" is pretty solid. But it fell down in execution pretty badly. Nothing could save the utterly brain-numbing nonsense of the plot, not even Emily Osment’s kicky red coat and frequent eye-rolling.

So in conclusion: D-Hen and Emily, it’s a good thing you’re cute.

Image from the superlative Emily Osment World.

A very long intro to a very short joke

So Becky has a little bit of a crush on David Henrie (Gay Older Brother on Wizards of Waverly Place). I don't blame her. He's a cutie!


You know, in a Nice Jewish Boy way. But we're both Nice Jewish Girls, so we have this sort of gut reaction to that. (That gut reaction is: "Awwww.")

Anyway, naturally we were discussing how we'd like him to be in a Nice Jewish Boy movie with Josh Peck and David Moscow (Brandeis!: The Musical, perhaps?), and started wondering whether he could sing.

Jess: Well, I assume he can, because he's a Disney Kid. It's only a matter of time before they stick him in a pair of fuchsia pants...
Becky: ...and make him sing "Always Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide"?
Jess: I'm blogging this.

P.S. From now David Henrie will henceforth be known as "D-Hen." Or perhaps just "Henny." Make it so!

Picture from David Henrie Online.