[review]: High School Musical
Cross-posted at: MovieZeal
United States, 2006
Directed By: Kenny Ortega
Written By: Peter Barsocchini
Starring: Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgeons, Ashley Tisdale, Corbin Bleu, Lucas Grabeel
Running Time: 98 minutes
Not Rated
4.5 out of 5 stars
The Disney Channel is frequently cited as an example of how low the House of Mouse has sunk since Walt’s death, and perhaps rightfully so—but from a strictly business perspective, you can’t really argue with results. In the last decade or so, the cable network (together with the equally unjustified Radio Disney) has done for “tweens” what their animated pictures and “Disney Afternoon” of years past did for younger children: turned them into a loyal army who will nag their parents into buying them anything. Say what you will, but it’s an expertly conceived formula: establish your tween heartthrobs, convince kids they should care, then release as many films and music albums featuring them as you possibly can, all carefully designed to separate parents from their paychecks. It should come as no surprise that this is a commercially successful endeavor, but it also turns out to be artistically successful much more often than one would expect. It’s provided us with the surprisingly smart cartoon Kim Possible, the criminally underrated sitcom Phil of the Future, and, most recently, the aptly-titled High School Musical.
High School Musical unsurprisingly aims squarely at the tween crowd, and (though the intended audience may not notice) draws heavily on both the “teensploitation” high school comedies of the last twenty years and the old-fashioned ensemble musicals of 30’s and 40’s—as if Busby Berkley had studied break dancing, and then had directed a heavily (and charmingly) sanitized version of Mean Girls. The plot is thoroughly conventional—a basketball star (Zac Efron) and a math wiz (Vanessa Anne Hudgens) discover that they can sing and try out for the titular endeavor, thus upsetting the delicate balance of their school’s cliques, calling down the scheming rage of the resident drama queen, and threatening their budding love.
(If they ever find out it's a wig, I can kiss my tween heartthrob days goodbye!)
That much should probably tell you if High School Musical is for you, but it probably fails to convey the sheer unabated joy the film is to watch. This owes largely to the well-designed choreography and the unstoppable enthusiasm the cast pours into each number, making even the hokiest moments “work,” to one extent or another. The music is perhaps slightly generic and heavily chart-inspired—standard guitar riffs and focus-grouped “funky” beats—but the cast embraces it, ignoring (or, in cases, playing up) its inherent silliness, to the extent that you really do believe that this is the greatest music ever (as the 11-year-old in your life undoubtedly will). In some cases, the music is clever enough to put all doubts to rest—as with the impossible-to-dislike showstopper “Stick with the Status Quo.”
The cast, young as it is, handles the material quite well. Efron’s got something of an everyman charm, and Hudgens manages to mesmerize, even with a fairly generic heartbreak ballad (the film’s only solo number), but the real standouts in the cast are Corbin Bleu, who shows off some impressive dance moves, and Ashley Tisdale, who steals the show as the villainous Sharpay (Lucas Grabeel, as her brother, squeezes in some great slapstick moments as well). The few adults in the cast understand that their job is to be funny, and then get out of the way—and they do it well (though Bart Johnson shows more nuance than you might expect).
Movie musicals are notoriously hard to do “right”—for one reason or another, characters that spontaneously burst out into song and dance are simply easier to believe on the stage than on the screen. Moulin Rouge got it right by envisioning itself as a feature-length music video, but most of the musicals to come since (Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera, etc.) have just been annoying to me for one simple reason: they all take themselves far, far too seriously. High School Musical gets what so many recent Hollywood offerings have forgotten: musicals should be fun. If your musical isn’t fun, people will step back, realize everyone is singing, and say, “This is stupid.” High School Musical bounces along with an inescapable energy that gives you no such chance.
