By Maddy Higgins
Teen Beach Movie is a Disney Channel original movie released in July 2013, following two teenagers who get trapped in a movie musical. It parodies classic 60s beach movies, with a satirized West Side Story-esque plot and archetypal characters.
In my opinion, the highlights of the movie are its musical numbers, with 60s music genres heavily influencing the soundtrack. The first musical number, “Surf Crazy”, takes inspiration from the 60s surf rock sound, with harmonic singing, twangy guitar, and a driving beat. Another highlight of the soundtrack is “Falling for Ya”, which takes inspiration from Motown singers of the era. Grace Phipps does an astounding job capturing the style, with her candid vocals and velvety vibrato. One of the things I absolutely love about this movie is the amazing vocalists in the cast, with the music styles letting them all shine.
The choreography is fun to look at and adds to the pure vibrant energy of every musical number. The choreographer and director for Teen Beach, Jeffrey Hornaday, who most notably choreographed for Flashdance (1983), A Chorus Line (1985), and Dick Tracy (1990). He was also nominated for the MTV Video Award for Best Choreography in 2003.
Now, I’d like to step back and contextualize. Teen Beach Movie was the first movie released by Disney Channel after High School Musical’s release in 2006. It was created under the shadow of High School Musical’s extreme popularity, but also its extreme backlash. See, the late 2000s to the early 2010s was the era of YouTube channels like 4Chan and TheNostalgiaCritic, who passionately hated and nitpicked High School Musical and other movies like it.
Although the High School Musical review TheNostalgiaCritic put on YouTube is a “fake” review, meaning he put on a persona that was intentionally nitpicky and self-important, lots of people took it at face value.
Criticisms and attitudes like this were very popular at the time, and the response to them influenced subsequent Disney Channel movie franchises like Descendants, which came soon after Teen Beach. The angstier, darker, and edgier movie starkly contrasted with the more upbeat, low-stakes franchises that the movie succeeded.
Teen Beach responds in the opposite way. Instead of attempting to seem edgy to appeal to its critical audience, it leans into the ridiculousness of its premise, letting watchers engage in the satire and still suspend their disbelief. In an interview with Hollywood Reporter, Jeffrey Hornaday, the director and choreographer of the film, talks about this element of the movie: “The girl takes the curse of the breakout-song-and-dance convention by saying up front, ‘Why do they do that? That’s so ridiculous.’ By doing that … we’ve overcome that obstacle and you can suspend disbelief in a naturalistic way.” The movie’s constant acknowledgment of its own ridiculousness allows people watching, especially kids, to just laugh along and have fun. It also gives the movie leeway to be totally off its rocker at some points.
Teen Beach is FAR from perfect. The second act drags and fails to keep up with the energy ignited in the beginning. There’s this subplot about these two mad scientists who kidnap our leads, who really do not fit in with the vibe of the movie as a whole. (My conspiracy theory about this is that Disney execs saw this movie as it was and were like, “NO! A whole movie just about conventionally attractive teenagers dancing and falling in love! What will our audience of young boys think? The only way they could possibly enjoy this movie is if we crammed in a sci-fi plotline with these two annoying adult men, barely granting them plot relevance!”) But alas, Jeffrey isn’t responding to my emails, so there’s no way to confirm.
Although having a Disney Channel original movie targeted at kids be a parody of a 60s beach movie seems somewhat odd, the vibrant and whimsical energy of the movie, as well as its willingness to embrace the absurdity of its existence, overcomes by far the technical problems I have with it. It is one of the weirdest, yet best things ever to be released by Disney Channel.
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