Apparently this film is popular with young children esp. eight year old girls. It's easy to see why, it's very shiny, moves along at a good pace with every scene pushing the story forwards and has un-threatening boys. As E_ pointed out it's pretty much the same basic story as Grease; a couple meet on holiday but the social pressures of high school prevent them from getting it on. Actually, that's not the only thing preventing them from getting it on, in this film their desires are also hampered by twisted neo-christian morality of the film makers (in my mind the film is made by a room full of suited middle aged men, Disney executives with a spreadsheet full of statistics). In spite of the uncomfortable way that the ostensibly under-age characters are sexualized, actual sexual desire or action is totally denied a place in the film, the main characters conspicuously never kiss, not even a chaste peck on the cheek, nothing. This strange state of affairs coupled with the in-human, heavily pro-tooled vocal style which renders all the singers, male and female, all but indistinguishable from one another, leads to the uneasy feeling that you're watching a kind of Stepford high school of perfectly smooth teenagers, blank plastic where the sex organs should be and digital synthesisers instead of lungs.
It's the cinematic equivalent of empty calories, whilst it may shut them up for a couple of hours, children deserve better.
IMDB
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