Lemonade Mouth Encourages Friendship and Self-Expression

My familiarity with tween Disney phenomena is fairly limited, so before this week I had never heard of the made-for-TV movie Lemonade Mouth, but when Netflix directed me to it, I decided to take a chance on this movie that’s a bit like a mash-up of High School Musical and The Breakfast Club.

Adapted from the Mark Peter Hughes book by April Blair, this movie, directed by Patricia Riggen, could probably be instantly pegged as a tween Disney musical. It just has that look and feel to it. It’s contemporary and earnest, walking the line between hip and corny without fully landing in either territory. For the most part, it’s not as cheesy as I thought it might be, though it definitely has its moments.

Lemonade Mouth takes its name from the band that five Mesa High School students form after an impromptu musical moment in detention, which they serve in the dilapidated music room. Only one of the five is a rabble-rouser; one is there for attempting to cut class under coercion from her boyfriend, and the others are there almost by accident. The beginning of the movie introduces each of them, swiftly establishing their personalities and family issues.

Blond pianist Wen (Adam Hicks) is bitter because his dad (Bob Jesser) is head over heels in love with a 28-year-old bombshell named Sydney (Ariana Smythe) and doesn’t seem to give two hoots about how Wen feels about their quickly-progressing relationship. Half-Japanese anarchic guitarist Stella (Hayley Kiyoko) hates the world because she is living in the shadow of her super-genius parents (Aimee Dale and Scott Takeda), who just moved her across the country a month into the school year.

Floppy-haired drummer Charlie (Blake Michael) is living under his mother’s (Lora Cunningham) expectation that he will be just like his soccer star brother, and Indian-American bassist Mo (Naomi Scott) gets exceptional grades but still feels she can’t live up to her father’s (Shishir Kurup) ideal of a perfect Indian woman. Our narrator, introverted blond singer-songwriter Olivia (Bridgit Mendler), is the only one whose family dynamics come out more gradually; in the beginning, all we know is that she lives with her grandmother (Judith Rane) and sickly cat.

The movie really does an excellent job of distinguishing these characters from one another and making us care about their situations. I found myself invested in every one of them, particularly Wen, whose dad is astonishingly insensitive but whose sweet soon-to-be-stepmom is truly making an effort to reach out to him. My favorite, though, is Olivia, whose quiet disposition and writerly impulses remind me of myself. While aggressive Stella is the driving force behind the band’s formation, gentle Olivia is the most essential as the lead singer and primary songwriter.

Lemonade Mouth starts at the end, with Olivia relating the band’s story at a point at which they have become enormously successful. We see the almost instantaneous rise to fame, and while the hearing-their-song-on-the-radio-for-the-first-time moment pales in intensity to That Thing You Do! or LOST’s Greatest Hits, their joy is still infectious. More striking, however, are communal displays of favor – the Lemonade Mouth signs that start popping up around school, the moment late in the film when fans touchingly demonstrate their absorption of the band’s lyrics.

Those lyrics are generally messages of affirmation, individuality and friendship. A couple of the songs have a rebellious streak, as the band is largely a reactionary effort against Principal Brenigan (Christopher McDonald), who rules over the school with Shatneresque authoritarian cheese. His office wall is covered in surveillance feeds from around the school; his face greets students multiple times a day via video announcements; he makes the rounds of the hallway on his Segway, gleefully distributing detentions.

Brenigan’s the Big Bad, but not really; he’s too silly to be truly intimidating, and every once in a while it’s evident that he truly does care about all his students. However, his chief concern at the moment is the athletics program, which is under the thumb of a sports drink company. The lemonade from the soon-to-be-ousted machine outside the music room becomes a symbol for freedom of expression and the idea that all extracurricular activities should be given adequate attention. The only other adult in the school who we get to know is music teacher Miss Reznick (Tisha Campbell-Martin), an enthusiastic educator frustrated by the principal’s policies and eager to help the kids make their voices of dissent heard.

McDonald and Campbell-Martin give the campiest performances in the movie, but they rarely made me wince and often caused me to chuckle. The songs fall firmly into the teen pop category, so I’m not all that into the style of most of them, but I like the message of most of Lemonade Mouth’s, and their chief rivals, punk rockers Mudslide Crush, offer an amusing juxtaposition with their hostile, self-aggrandizing lyrics. I would never buy the soundtrack to the movie, but the music is enjoyable enough in context.

I expected to find Lemonade Mouth pretty silly, and at times I did, but I was surprised at how invested I got in the main quintet. By the time each of them finds some resolution to the problems pressing on them at the beginning, I actually caught myself misting up a little. I certainly recommend this to the tween crowd, but if you’re older than that, you might consider giving it a shot anyway. It sure didn’t leave a sour taste in my mouth.