After the unexpected smash-hit status of the made-for-TV film High School Musical, Disney gave us High School Musical 2; another High School Musical seemed inevitable, but when Disney announced the third installment would be coming to the big screen at your local multiplex instead of the small one in your living room, fans and film buffs wondered if Disney wasn’t stretching things a little in the name of box-office rewards. Would High School Musical get a passing grade on the big screen, or flunk?
And certainly, the plot of High School Musical 3: Senior Year is C-grade stuff, continuing the romance between unlikely sweethearts Troy (Zac Efron) and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens); for those of you whose kids have not played the first two films an infinite number of times in the background until you can’t stop humming the songs, Troy’s a basketball star who, in the first film, discovered his love for musical theater; Gabriella, once the new kid in town, also discovered she loved the stage — and, soon enough, Troy. Set against our heroes is rich, egocentric Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale), who lost her place as the star of every show to Gabrielle — as well as the possibility of Troy’s affections. With graduation on the horizon, there’s time for one last show at East High … and for a few surprises which, really, aren’t surprising at all.
The good news for fans of the series — and bad news for headache-prone parents sure to be dragged to the multiplex — is that the people behind High School Musical 3 have not just filled the film with hot air and hype to bloat it up to the proportions of the movie screen. Director Kenny Ortega and his production team fill the movie with big, brassy spectacle during the musical numbers, and the movie’s far bigger than the TV films that led to it, with better sets, more ambitious staging and pumped-up dance numbers.
While the production of the film feels bigger than the original films, though, the plot feels a little … smaller. Part of that’s the absence of the original film’s awkward, adolescent do-I-fit-in? storyline. Troy and Gabriella face challenges in High School Musical 3 (she’s off to Stanford, while he’s fated to play basketball at U of Arizona, like his dad …), and yet you know they’re going to work things out — which makes Efron’s dance-away-my-anger Michael Jackson-styled numbers look a little over the top. And Tisdale’s Sharpay gave the first two films a lemony, acid zing, but that’s in part because she was fighting for something; in this film, as Gabrielle has both the lead in the play and the hand of Troy unquestionably, she’s spinning her wheels.
It’s not just Sharpay who gets shoved off-screen by the Troy and Vanessa plot; Troy’s comrade-in-hoops Chad (Corbin Bleu) and Sharpay’s talented dancer brother Ryan (Lucas Grabeel) also get less screen time than in the previous films, as what was once an ensemble story about a group of kids becomes a romance about only two of them. And Efron and Hudgens sell that, to be sure — in a gentle, light-on-the-smoochy-stuff, Disney way. (Any time Efron and Hudgens look like they’re going to kiss more than once — or do more than kiss — they instead break into song, as if East High combined its Arts program with abstinence-based Sex Ed.)
Your kids, though, won’t care; they’ll love the songs and the dances and seeing familiar faces up on screen. And so what if East High seems to be the only school in America where every kid is wealthy, gorgeous and free of dermatological or dental challenges? At the press screening of High School Musical 3 the kids in the crowd weren’t teens looking for a mirror of their lives; they were pre-teens looking for a dream of their futures. And the singing, dancing, live-your-dreams plot of High School Musical 3 may be even more retro than the ’80s dance moves Ortega rips off, but then again, it’s not retro if you weren’t around for it the first time. Sure, High School Musical 3 is a dream version of high school; isn’t that kind of naïve joy and optimism what musicals are for?
Posted on October 24, 2008 at 4:30 pm
poor sharpay! i thought by far she was the star of the first two movies! and she (and her bro in the film, ryan) have the best song in HSM 3: i want it all!!! :)
so boo for her getting less screen time… i’ll find out for myself on sunday!
Posted on October 27, 2008 at 10:44 pm
okay… you were right! it was allllll about gabriella and troy! grrrr! i still enjoyed it, though it was a bit on the long side! It seemed weird though how they just kinda dropped everyone from the previous movies… most of the “stars” were barely in it! and then added new people (tiara gold, rocketman) who are obviously going to be in the 4th movie…
so all in all… a little lovey dovey… but good songs, and good performances by all :)
42 million… the numbers don;t lie!
Posted on December 20, 2008 at 2:30 pm
High School Musical 1 & 2 were okay but number 3 is not very good just because they used the seimor year DUH what else comes after your third year.