Blu-ray Review: ‘High School Musical’ and ‘High School Musical 3’

I am not the target audience for Disney’s popular High School Musical trilogy. However, that does not mean I cannot appreciate them for the phenomenally popular spectacle they have become. Tween girls and boys of all shapes and sizes have been gobbling these musicals up since the first one debuted on the Disney Channel in 2006, which is why the $90-plus million theatrical gross of High School Musical 3: Senior Year nowhere near the shocker many critics would like you to believe.

Having finally watched the new Blu-ray releases of both these films (skipping over the second chapter because it wasn’t sent to us for review — what’s the deal Disney?) I admit I didn’t feel an ounce of regret viewing them. What I expected to be nothing more than annoying “Saved by the Bell” retreads only with terrible pop songs were instead oddly okay time-wasters perfectly suited for family audiences. In short, they’re great if you’re 12-years-old, and even if you’re not, unlike so many other Disney releases (College Road Trip anyone?), it’s hardly going to kill you if you end up seeing one.

These movies are cheap, oddly plastic and wholly unoriginal and performed with such wild exuberance the effect can sometime be exhausting. The East High Wildcats are so full of energy you’d almost think they were lacing caffeine into the drinking water, and even when characters slow down that just means instead of sprinting (or dancing) from place-to-place they’ve just decided to segue into a gentle jog.

In terms of story, at least as far as parts one and three are concerned, the basic plot never changes. The popular kids of the school try to balance sports, arts and education while also mixing in a little bit of harmlessly chaste romance, everything culminating in a theatrical musical where all the casts’ hopes and dreams are spelled out in a bouncy not-so-subtle lyrical finale.

While I won’t admit to any of them being very good actors, I will say stars Zac Efron (school basketball star Troy Bolton), Vanessa Hudgens (smart and sassy transfer student Gabriella Montez), Ashley Tisdale (East High queen bee Sharpay Evans), Lucas Grabeel (Sharpay’s jiggy-with-it brother Ryan), Corbin Bleu (Troy’s best bud Chad Danforth) and Monique Coleman (Wildcat brainiac Taylor McKessie) are all well-suited to the characters they portray. It’s easy to see how they’ve become so popular, each bringing the just the right amount of class and sass to their respective rolls.

Disney is excited about their Blu-ray releases of these two titles, particularly the third one. Both come with features you’d expect like Music Videos, Sing-Along options, Deleted Scenes, Bloopers and Making-Of featurettes, but there is a care and an attention to detail that’s a bit beyond the usual same old-same old. On the first film I found some of the mini-docs to be unexpectedly strong, the four-part featurette examining the complicated dances in the movie far more thorough than I’d ever have anticipated.

The main selling point for the studio on Senior Year is the inclusion of their BDisney Live Network allowing viewers to craft their own commentaries, fan pages and talk about the film with other enthusiasts. As I got the film well before its release date this wasn’t too exciting an extra as far as I was concerned but I can see how youngsters could go ape over it. While I often have trouble believing anyone in their right mind is going to go all gaga when movies like Changeling or Quarantine offer similar extras, with a sensation like this I can see kids logging online like crazy to give it a go giving the series an unanticipated life of its own impossible to quantify.

As for sound and picture, both are excellent. While High School Musical is presented in its original 1.78:1 widescreen format, Senior Year is offered in its theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Each film looks great, the former having some ever-so slight edging issues hinting at its television origins. Audio, on the other hand, is spectacular, Senior Year offering up a 5.1 DTS-HD Master track that gave my apartment’s speakers a solid workout.

Finally, I want to commend Disney for including standard definition DVDs with many of their more kid-friendly Blu-ray titles. This was an extra started with their sensational release of Sleeping Beauty and it continues with Senior Year, and I love the fact the studio realizes just because a family owns a Blu-ray player it doesn’t mean they have one everywhere there’s a television. With these high-definition discs so often sporting prices sometimes double that of their standard-def counterparts the fact Disney doesn’t force people to double-dip is refreshing, and it’s an extra I only hope other studios emulate.

I’m not going to say High School Musical or its third sequel are films I’ll ever watch again. I can pretty much guarantee the opposite. Still, these are not movies I can hate on, the duo made with just enough energy, intelligence and skill they’re very easy to sit through. As for the kids, I can see why they’ve fallen in love with them, and considering just how much crap exists out there right now I’d much rather have them watching these two pictures than so much of that horrible dreck.

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