High School Musical 3: Senior Year (7/10)

by Tony Medley

Run time 100 minutes.

It speaks volumes about the state of American films when two of the most entertaining films to be released his fall are high school movies, stories about high school students and aimed at the high school intellect. First, “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist,” and now this.

Super Albuquerque East High athlete Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) is in love with sweetie Vanessa Hudgens (Gabriella Montez). They are graduating. They are both in a school musical. She’s been accepted at Stanford. He’s ticketed to play basketball at the University of Arizona. They will be apart. Boo hoo.

There is a B love story, too, between two black students, Chad Danforth (Corbin Blue) and Taylor McKessie (Monique Coleman), just to make sure that this film appeals to all colors. Then there are the twins, Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) and Ryan (Lucas Grabeel) and transfer student Tiara (Jemma McKenzie-Brown). The girls are generally up to no good (but in a fun sort of way) and Ryan is the show’s choreographer and dresses like an artiste. One thing that they all have in common is that they can sing and dance. And how!

But East High is a place out of some time warp from the 1950s where everyone is nice and friendly and nobody makes fun of the way Ryan dresses or Sharpay acts or anything else, for that matter. From what I’ve heard about today’s high schools, a school like this is a fantasy. Everything’s just hunky-dory, except for the fact that graduation is going to split up that old gang of mine.

But the people who don’t particularly care about the verisimilitude of the story are director/choreographer Danny Ortega and writer/creator Peter Barsocchini, who have a franchise, and it’s singing and dancing, and they know how to do it extremely well.

The songs are upbeat and nice, although not Rodgers & Hammerstein, they are more entertaining than much of what passes as music today, and the choreography is happy and uplifting. There isn’t one special effect. There is no profanity, no nudity, no gratuitous sex, no bad parents, no terrible teachers, no evil people. You’re not going to this movie for the story or for any reason other than the singing and dancing. This movie is filled with them, and it is a lot of fun.