High School Musical 3: Senior Year

I almost feel like a cynic writing this review. High School Musical 3: Senior Year is so gosh-darn perky, energetic, and eager to please that it almost prevents anyone from applying logical thought to it. Of course, you're not supposed to. The movie is relentlessly cheerful and sunny, unapologetically cornball, and takes place in a fantasy high school world where everyone has perfect bodies and hair, and scholarships to expensive and prestigious colleges like Juilliard are handed out like pieces of candy. The movie sure is pleasant and doesn't really do anything to offend, but at nearly two hours, it starts to get to be a bit much.

Allow me to explain my thoughts during the course of this film. The movie opens at a basketball game between the Wildcats (our heroes), and a nameless rival team who are obviously evil because they like to push the good team around right there on the court. (Those fiends...) The Wildcats are behind on the scoreboard, and there's only 16 minutes left in the game. Star player Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) starts to lead his fellow players in a rousing pop song about how they have to work together, and that this is their last chance to make their mark on the basketball court, since they graduate in a few months. The cheerleaders join in the song, the audience seems to be clapping along, hell even the team mascot seems to join in. The only ones in the game not singing is the other team, because they are evil, and hail from some dark high school where singing your feelings is forbidden by punishment of having your toe nails ripped out by rabid dogs. At least that's the conclusion I reached as to why they weren't singing...

Corny as it all was, I had to admit, the energy in this sequence was through the roof. Series director and head choreographer Kenny Ortega (who was the choreographer on 1987's Dirty Dancing) knows how to work his audience, and makes the opening number into quite a showstopper in its own way. I was admiring Zac Efron, who I first noticed in last year's musical film of Hairspray, since I had never seen the previous two High School Musical films that had aired on the Disney Channel. He had a good voice, had a lot of energy, and seemed to have a lot of screen presence. Then, his girlfriend, Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) stands up in the stands to sing and cheer her boyfriend on, saying that she believes in him. My heart sunk a little when I realized Gabriella was going to be the female lead. She's attractive and all, but Hudgens is so blandly sweet from the word go, and her singing voice sometimes resembles that of a teenage Smurf. Because of the rousing song, and the heroic team's ability to believe in themselves while singing, they pull off a victory over their rivals and win the championship. All is right with the world.

Or, is it? We quickly learn that Gabriella has been accepted to Stanford University, which is over 1,000 miles away from where Troy's going to be. Bummer. As for Troy, he's torn as to whether he wants to pursue basketball (which is what his dad wants) or musical theater. Double bummer. In a subplot, the entire drama club is going to be writing and putting on their own Spring Musical about their thoughts and fears of life beyond high school. The spoiled diva rich girl, Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale), is scheming behind the scenes to try to get the final production number with Troy, and start herself on a career path to being famous, which she sings about in an energetic and surprisingly satirical number called "I Want It All". As for poor Gabriella, she's been granted the opportunity to start Stanford early, which means she won't be there for the big musical, the prom, or to graduate. These are the kind of problems you want to have when you're in high school. Don't worry, though. It all works out thanks to Troy's magical truck that, even though it looks like the kind of thing Redd Foxx used to drive on Sanford and Son, can travel over a thousand miles in less than two days to pick up Gabriella at Stanford, and get her back in time for the final production number, so that no-good scheming Sharpay doesn't get to go on in her place. Sorry if I spoiled it for anyone, and you thought the movie was going to end with Troy and Gabriella dead in a ditch.

The High School Musical films have been a phenomenon with teens and "tweens", and it's easy to see why in this movie. It's bright and cheerful to a ridiculous degree, it's loaded top to bottom with an attractive young cast to make the girls swoon, and the songs are so perky and deceptively catchy that they drill themselves into your brain to the point that you'll require surgery in order to remove them. It's the energy that sells it. The energy of the cast, the choreography, the musical numbers, and the fact that the movie never once slows down long enough for us to complain how ridiculous it all is, even though it's constantly in the back of our minds. The talented young cast are more than capable to meet whatever the movie throws at it when it comes to singing and dancing. I may have been turned off by Gabriella, due to the fact she pretty much does nothing but smile and look dreamily into Troy's eyes (even when she's singing), but the rest of the cast each get their moment to shine in either a musical number or a dance sequence.

If High School Musical 3 had maybe been an hour long TV special or something, I'd probably label it as being cute but ultimately silly. Unfortunately, this is a feature length film. A feature length film that runs for nearly two hours. The movie's total lack of substance starts to show through by about the one hour mark, and it didn't take long until the whole thing was getting to be a bit too much. At least the previous entries were made for TV, so there were commercial breaks that brought you back to reality. Here, you're being bombarded by nonstop happiness and sunshine for two hours straight. I understand that the movie is supposed to be mindless fluff for the young audience, and I'm obviously not the audience it's looking for. Even so, this movie wore me out. Any parent taken to this movie by their kid would be wise to plan strategic bathroom or drink/popcorn refill breaks, or risk losing their sanity to the full-frontal assault of Weapons of Mass Perkiness.

I'm not recommending High School Musical 3, but I probably would if I was the right age and mind set that the movie is targeting. It's at least made with some degree of skill, which makes it watchable to those who don't have posters of the cast on their wall. The Disney company plans to continue the series with a new cast for the next film, which supposedly will be going back to television. I can't imagine what kind of troubles the new cast will face. Maybe one of them will break a nail right before their big song. I won't know, because I most likely won't be watching. Regardless, I wish them the best of luck, and hope their years of high school are as gosh-darn incredibly wonderful as Troy and Gabriella's were.

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