High School Musical 3: Senior Year

The gang's final big screen goodbye is lacking in story, but who cares when there's big colorful musical numbers and Zac Efron.

By Jen Cady Oct 23, 2008 9:57 PMTags
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Review in a Hurry: The gang's final big-screen goodbye is lacking in story, but who cares when there are big colorful musical numbers and Zac Efron?

The Bigger Picture: For High School Musical's third and sort-of-final act, director-choreographer Kenny Ortega takes his gang of merry, singing Wildcats to the big screen, which means it's time to get 'cha head in the game. Efron has to be prettier (and he is so dreamy!), the dancing more intricate (a waltz!), the songs bigger and louder ("I Want It All") and the love story even more romantic (um, this doesn't happen).

On most of these accounts, the film succeeds. The musical numbers have definitely come a long way since they started out in a room with just a karaoke machine and some lovey-dovey eyes. Everything is more colorful, bigger, shinier, and they even sprung for some fancy CGI basketballs this time around. And all this has paid off; it's fun to watch the charismatic cast, especially Ashely Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel and Efron, who jumps around the basketball court, a junkyard and school hallways with all the power of Teen Wolf.

There is absolutely no way fans of this series will be disappointed.

Unfortunately, while everyone was busy making superawesome dance sequences, someone let the ball drop on the story. HSM proper is all about Efron's Troy Bolton's desire to sing in addition to being a star basketball player. In No. 2, Troy is seduced by a richer and more powerful class, which he has to overcome in order to be true to himself and his friends.

However, this one is lacking any strong conflict, leaving Troy without any clear motivation among a sea of inconsequential subplots. Does he want to play basketball or sing at Juilliard or just follow his high school sweetheart wherever she goes and what about prom and the year-end play? Who cares—when's the next song?

But there's really no reason to get that worked up about this movie. High School Musical knows exactly what it is—a bunch of well-adjusted, pretty kids who get through common high school problems by singing a bunch of cheesy, fun, pop-y songs—and the films are completely unapologetic and sincere about this. There's something refreshing about the movie's complete lack of irony, and when the kids sing at the end "I want the rest of my life to feel just like a high school musical," that really doesn't sound so bad.

The 180—a Second Opinion: It'd be just as easy—let's say you're the cranky and cynical type—to see HSM as nothing but carefully constructed focus-grouped fluff, with boring songs that want to be catchy but don't quite make it to that level.