Teen Beach 2 (2015)

Teen Beach 2 arrives as a Disney Channel Original Movie sequel, which places it in a lineage that includes Camp Rock 2 and not much else. The premise is agreeable nonsense: the stars of a 1960s beach musical, Wet Side Story, tumble out of the screen and into the present day, where they marvel at smartphones and math homework while two teenagers fret about their relationship. Jeffrey Hornaday directs with the efficiency of a man who knows the dance numbers are the point. The young ensemble is noticeably multiethnic for its era and format, with Jordan Fisher, Chrissie Fit, Ross Butler, and Raymond Cham Jr. doing solid work. Nobody in the film ever mentions this. It is simply the cast. We note it here and move on.

The picture does carry a mild progressive streak. The plot turns on Lela rewriting her own film to give it more feminist tones, and Mack is drawn as an ambitious organizer instead of a girlfriend waiting by the phone. The treatment is breezy and comic. A recurring Save the Beach motif provides the closest thing to environmental messaging, which is to say a school gymnasium theme. The moral instruction is limited to gentle reminders about honesty in relationships and following your passion, delivered between musical numbers and promptly forgotten.

As cultural documents go, this is a modest one. The social consciousness is present but soft, folded into a song-and-dance romp aimed at children who will not interrogate it. The film wants to be liked, and it is reasonably likable. We file it accordingly, with the sober acknowledgment that even a beach party must now be catalogued.