High School Musical 3 Review
Can the Kids Make the Trasition to the Big Screen for Senior Year?
Dec 10, 2008
You’ll be glad to learn then that Disney loosened the purse strings for the third and big screen debut of High School Musical, subtitled Senior Year, and upped and ante considerably. The film feels bigger and more important. It looks better and sounds better and has some truly inspired music and dancing.
Best of all, it finally has the resources to be filmed the way a musical should be: cutting to the rhythm of the music, keeping the motion kinetic, always having something interesting happening, with the exception of a waltz on the school roof that is filmed mostly in long shot, leaving about ninety percent of the frame left static against the vast open sky.
The Plot
So what are the kids of East High up to on their third outing? Well, more of the same except this time, and maybe this is key ingredient, they all find themselves faced with a more important and engaging moral dilemma then how they will spend their summer: the rest of their lives.
Troy is torn between a future in basketball and a future in theater, Gabriella doesn’t know if she wants to leave Troy over a thousand miles behind to attend Stanford University, Sharpay is still trying to steal the spotlight in the drama department but this time she is up against her brother Ryan to win a special scholarship to Julliard, and Chad is hoping he and Troy will be shooting hoops together at the University of Albuquerque. The film is still set in a fairytale world, but this time the pressures of the real world are looking in. That’s the emotional kick that sets this installment apart.
The Cast and Crew
As for the returning performers: Zac Efron can sing and dance, but his lip syncing is so exaggerated it boarders on distraction, Vanessa Hudgens is cute as a button but her voice veers dangerously close to being too sickly sweet at times, Ashley Tisdale is annoying beyond words but has the strongest voice of the bunch, and Lucas Grabeel as Ryan Evans is so good that he should have a successful career on Broadway if he so chooses.
Again, the film is directed and choreographed by Kenny Ortega, who once upon a time choreographed Dirty Dancing. Sure enough, Ortega is a better dancer than filmmaker, his aesthetic capabilities sometimes having a hard time rising to film’s lively performance, but the unending invention of his dance moves, the athletic capability of the performers and the sheer scale of the production make up for any of his deficiencies. This is High School Musical all grown up.
The Verdict
So, the question remains: is High School Musical 3 a great film? Honestly, it’s not. It’s now well made, but still doesn’t even begin to operate on the same level of storytelling as likeminded films such as Hairspray or Fame. Yet, although it is cheesy and, by its very nature, contrived, everything somehow falls into place in a way that it didn’t before: the romances are sweeter, the songs are bigger and livelier, and the content is richer with emotional drama. So, it would take a true artistic tyrant to deny that the film is basically fun and innocent and goofy in a sweet kind of way. This critic is not the target audience for this one kind of thing but it can be assumed that anyone who liked the previous films will have its heart stolen by this one.
