‘High School Musical 3’ splashes on the silver screen

It opens with the flash of a light bulb. Then another.

Then back to black. And then, with sudden clarity, an extreme close up on a sweating, slow-motion Zac Efron, mid-game, turning his head melodramatically to a ticking basketball scoreboard. The big game that decides whether or not East High School’s seniors win their second championship.

Director Kenny Ortega knows how to plunge an audience right back into the lives of Troy Bolton (Zac Efron), Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens) and all their eerily diverse high school friends.

His palette, though, is far more flexible this time. Throwing large amounts of money at a project, in this case, works beautifully. “High School Musical 3,” the third installment in Disney’s current premiere franchise, takes the premise of the first two TV movies and engorges it with a bigger budget, cinematic shots, flashier fantasy numbers and new characters.

The soaring, slow movie walks the audience through a conflicted senior year for all the characters, to the tune of the same catchy kid-pop that hammered songs like “We’re All in This Together” and “You Are the Music In Me” into every grade school in America. High-energy numbers such as “The Boys Are Back” (an intricate boys number that involves a junkyard and breakdancing) and “I Want It All” (a decadently outrageous number that involves lots and lots of Fosse) keep the film fun. Committed performances from Efron, Corbin Bleu (jock Chad Danforth) and Lucas Grabeel (effeminate Ryan Evans) really glues the epic musical together.

Think Zeigfeld-like panoramas of a posing chorus, modern hip-hop breakdowns, intricate ballroom partner routines and lots of dream sequences (no really, a LOT). Musical theater geeks will revel in the blatant references to Fred Astaire, “Chicago,” “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Grease.” To add, the eclectic, vibrant choreography, thanks to Bonnie Story and Charles Klapow, will not be an easy one to break down for the Dance Along DVD.

But this is a kids movie; cheesy simplicity, along with tweeny melodrama, must make its way to the screen somehow.

Uncomfortably present in the film are the gratuitous moments where Efron and Hudgens make saccharine looks at one another, eyes sparkling, arms wrapped around each other, noses touching — yet they never kiss.

There are enough romantic fantasy scenes to make sure everyone understands that Troy and Gabriella like each other. Troy feeds her chocolate covered strawberries during a picnic and asks her to prom on a flower-filled rooftop with a waltz (and then it starts to rain — very “Sixteen Going on Seventeen”).

The pair also has chances to perform their own songs. While Hudgens’ solos fall flat, Efron’s soliloquy shines far brighter than his ill-conceived and cheap Kevin Bacon impression “Bet on It” from HSM 2. “Scream,” though not as strong as Bacon’s furious warehouse gymnastics in “Footloose,” reminds us that Efron may have star power after all. This time around, his intense stares and even wardrobe more closely echo the ’80s hunk’s role as dancing bad boy Ren, who Efron is slated to play in 2010.

HSM 3’s star gets a lot of intimate time with the camera in the film. Ortega seems to have made Efron’s distracting, pulsating tricep vein and rippling back muscles stars in the film as well, making parts of the film seem oddly like a cologne commercial — or maybe it’s his sneaky gift to the moms and babysitters forced to take their braces-gnashing, shrieking children to consume a brand that has proliferated children’s rooms, closets and toy boxes since 2006.

Despite Disney’s tactically aggressive branding (last time I checked, HSM lip gloss, karaoke, backpacks and bed sheets were available at Target), it teaches children to sing, dance and “break free” just like their favorite stars. Every single character, even the diva-liciously bitchy Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale) has dreams and goals and fights to achieve those desires through school involvement, a refreshing change of pace to the fluffy cartoons and other programs that fill kid media.

There’s even a Disney version of the real senior year. Issues of identity, separation anxiety and insane amounts of college name-dropping give pause between the singing and dancing. It can be laboriously dizzying at times though ­— so much goes on in the 112 minutes, which might be Ortega’s last chance to milk the HSM franchise.

At its core, HSM 3 is a ludicrous, extravagant fantasy that gives musical-hungry kids an escapist session of fluffy fun, disguised morals and flashing colors to the tune of catchy pop — a welcome release from an era of economic uncertainty. Musical-driven escapism, though, is an old American tradition, and though HSM might not secure a place in cinematic halls of fame in the centuries to come, it is a financial and cultural phenomenon that has infiltrated not just the hearts and rooms of children, but adults ashamed to admit that they know every single word to all three soundtracks.

Sure, the last thing the world needs is another sequel, but like the last number, the graduation scene, blares, “It’s not meant to last forever.” But rest assured that you’ll be humming “We’re All in This Together” until Armageddon.



Check out an online photo gallery of the ‘High School Musical 3’ world premiere at dailytrojan.com.

Comments

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above: