Jonas Brothers: The Concert Experience (Blu-ray)

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It's a high-energy concert that uses fireworks and laser light shows and all sorts of things to intensify the experience for the young audience, which stands and waves glow-sticks throughout the show. Only a handful of ballads or down-tunes are performed. The rest are up-tempo, though I have to say that I can understand why my daughter says the music was "okay." One song seems to blend into the next, with little distinction. This concert is for hardcore fans, who may enjoy seeing the three boys mug for cameras and never tire of the "gee I'm cute" or "gee are we popular" refrains. But I wholeheartedly agree with my daughter that real behind-the-scenes footage would have been much better than this staged nonsense. And a clip involving "fake" Jonas Brothers (imitators) trying to interact with a crowd of fans is just painful to watch. And also just a little self-congratulatory, if you ask me (Look, we're so popular we have imitators!). I much preferred the honesty of the Hannah Montana concert movie.

As for the 3D, here too the "Hannah Montana 3D Concert" is far superior. In some shots, as when Joe extends his arm with microphone toward the crowd so they can sing, his arm distorts in 3D so it looks thin and spindly as a parakeet leg, and this kind of unnatural foreshortening occurs at least a half-dozen times. Though front-line objects and people pop out nicely, people in the middle distance have haloes around them and stage lighting also creates some "false positives" when it comes to 3D activity. Shot from the perspective of some 25 people deep into the crowd, this concert experience also gets a little old and distracting when we keep having to see every scene with waving hands and glow-sticks in the foreground. The 3D effect is absent from the occasional concert longshots, and the gimmicks inserted just for the benefit of 3D (like sunglasses and guitar picks thrown into the crowd) look as noticeably CGI as they do 3D. In some of the more frenetic action the 3D image blurs a bit too. And I kept checking my cheapo glasses (four pair are included) to make sure they were clean, because the stage lighting seen through those glasses kept making it look just a little hazy in spots. Just as there are haloes around figures in the middle distance, sometimes the background figures have indistinct margins. In short, it's not the best 3D application I've seen. The "Hannah Montana 3D Concert" is far superior.

In 2D, the picture just looks flat and filmy, and those "thrown" guitar picks look even more CGI than in 3D. Neither way is particularly pleasing, though, again, hardcore fans may enjoy it. As for the concert itself, I personally found the bells and whistles and acrobatics to be a distraction, rather than an enhancement. Then again, if you isolate the songs and do away with all the gimmicks, you're left with a selection that makes you realize just how much the tunes seem to be tailor-made for those bubblegummers in the audience. No wonder my daughter liked Lovato's "This is Real." By that time, even she needed something that felt honest.

Video:
As I said, both the 3D and 2D versions were disappointments that really worked against High Definition. The concert was transferred to a 50GB disc via AVC/MPEG-4 encode, and it's tough to tell how good the transfer is when there's so much ghosting and haloing on figures in the middle distance and background. You get a nice level of detail in close shots, but those cheapo glasses make it difficult to see as well. Concert lighting tends to subvert the process, and several times I looked to see if my glasses were dirty, because the difficult lighting cast a haze that detracted from the High Definition. Even behind-the-scenes shots aren't as crisp as we're used to seeing, though at least colors are true and black levels seem okay. But compared to the "Hannah Montana" concert, the 3D version of the "Jonas Brothers" concert is consistently imprecise. The movie is presented in 1.85:1 aspect ratio.

Audio:
Disney went with a full seven-channel English DTS-HD Master Audio on this one, and all seven channels get a workout. Fans are either going to love it or hate it, but one feature of the audio is that the sound is mixed so that whoever is on-camera has his/her microphone turned up so you can clearly distinguish that person's vocals or playing from everyone else's. I personally liked it, since it reinforced the feeling of a real concert rather than a heavily processed and packaged entity. You could gauge at any point during the concert just how well a particular performer was doing. The bass may not have had as much chomp to it as I would have expected, but then again this trio likes the high range, and they'll slip into falsetto the way other people slip on Crocs. And the high-end sounds very good, with a nice timbre to the treble. An additional audio option is Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, with subtitles in English SDH, French, and Spanish.

Extras:
This three-disc combo pack features the extended movie in 3D and 2D on Blu-ray, plus a DVD and Digital Copy with the film in 2D. It actually looks better in 2D on DVD than Hi-Def, with fewer flaws noticeable. In addition to those two bonus songs there's an extended commercial for Blu-ray from the stars of "The Suite Life on Deck" and a nice "Up Close & Personal" behind-the-scenes look at the Jonas brothers narrated by one of them that gives fans what they should have gotten with the footage that was cut into the film. This bonus feature feels more honest, and at times the Jonas who narrates (sorry, I'm not such a rabid fan that I can identify his voice) even addresses fans directly in a modest way that never comes across in the film. So just two years ago these guys were performing in front of 100 people, tops? No wonder the family's motto is "Livin' the dream."

Bottom Line:
These guys have talent, but I'd like to see what they can do when they forget about making little girls scream and concentrate on their music. And as 3D concert experiences go, the "Hannah Montana Best of Both Worlds" was far superior.

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