Disney Kidcom Screams Miley Ripoff

Still enthralled with Miley Cyrus, Disney is rolling out a so-so show starring its latest "'Hannah'-mannered" glam-girl, Tom Shales writes in the Washington Post. Sonny With a Chance stars Demi Lovato as a comic on an SNL-ish sketch-comedy show. "Not a bad idea in theory," writes Shales, but it's too bad Disney didn't follow Nickelodeon's iCarly, a "sprightlier" comedy about a girl who is "clever, resourceful and super-brainy."

Other critics are more generous, if unimpressed. "Fluff, sweet and harmless," writes Joan Anderman in the Boston Globe. "Neither quirky nor witty, but rather pure tween archetype." In the LA Times, Robert Lloyd tips his hat to Lovato's pop music stardom—"enmeshed head to toe in the whole Disney star-making machinery"—and praises her "comically mobile face... to the extent that it even matters."


(More Disney stories.)