Skip to main content

Review High School Musical

 Recently rewatched this Disney Channel Original and have some thoughts, this post will contain spoilers!

High School Musical


Summary

    The story starts with Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) and Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens) meeting on their winter break trip to the ski lodge where they are forced to sing together. They leave thinking they'll never see each other again until Gabreilla shows up at Troy's school, apparently having recently moved to New Mexico. When she finds out about the school musical, she tells Troy she won't audition unless they audition for the leads together. When the callbacks list goes up, they make the list much to Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) and Ryan (Lucas Grabeel) Evan's dismay as they usually are the leads in the play.  
    
    When Gabriella's Academic Decathalon team and Troy's basketball team find out about the callbacks they work together to keep them from going to callbacks. Meanwhile, Sharpay and Evan make sure that both of their extracurriculars they're in have events on the day of callbacks. 

One Sentence Review 

Rating: 5/10

The songs are so good, the plot...is annoying

My Thoughts


    While I acknowledge this is a Disney Channel Original and so the plot is allowed to be less than cohesive as long as the other factors such as the songs and characters. The songs are great, with a few exceptions. The problem is the characters, the main two, Troy and Gabriella are just too annoying for me to ignore the plot and in contrast, Sharpay and Ryan were too iconic of villains. It's obvious to me at least that Sharpay had a right to be upset over Gabriella and Troy being given a chance to audition despite missing all of their auditions. On top of that, they don't even seem to want the rolls to the music and Sharpay and Ryan's renditions of the audition songs are ten times better in every way. 

    The movie gets a 5/10 solely because I enjoy the songs, "We're all in this Together", "Stick to the Status Quo", and "Bop to the Top" were all great numbers just the dialogue in between the songs to keep the film moving made no sense. A feud between the basketball team and Academic Decathalon team was just a meh idea. And if Zeke wants to bake, let the man bake!

    Also, Zac Efron isn't even singing so what was the point of casting him in a role where the main focus is singing when there were so many people who auditioned for the role that probably could sing? However, this is just me finding any reason not to like Zac Efron after the whole Greatest Showman situation (If you know you KNOW). When it comes to Gabriella, the first thing she says is something along the lines of not wanting to be known as the super smart girl and honestly it was just really off-putting for me. It was an attempt at saying she was bullied for being a nerd but in a super shallow way. AND she apparently isn't able to sing solo in front of people without getting stage fright but literally met Troy by SINGING IN FRONT OF A BUNCH OF PEOPLE. One might say "Oh well she was with Troy so that's not solo. Then riddle me this: Why did she get stage fright while on stage with Troy before singing Breaking Free then if she only gets stage fright when she is going to sing the duet?

Favorite Character

    My favorite character is Ryan, I love a character who wears a newsies cap. He also just wants to dance and like he's generally unproblematic and I love him for that. I don't have any other characters I would rank as a favorite character and that's just because basically all the characters lacked depth to be attached, and I can only like one character in each film who doesn't have any development.

Best Quotes

3) "Everyone loves a good jazz square" - Ryan

2)  "If you sing in musicals, you'll end up in my mom's refridgerator" - Chad

1) "What the heck are those two doing in a tree" - Coach Bolton

An Inspired Playlist

All of the aforementioned songs have been included in this playlist because they're good songs, here are some more that match the vibe: 

Hopelessly Devoted To You - Olivia Newton-John: High school musical is so clearly an interpretation of Grease, Troy and Gabriella definitely have that Sandy/Danny vibe. 

Break up with your girlfriend, I'm bored - Ariana Grande: I just know that Gabriella could and would reach this level of toxicity, but she would not make it in as catchy of a song. 

I Did Something Bad - Taylor Swift: Gabriella would listen to this after the last song as a continuation. 

It's My Life - Bon Jovi: Troy would listen to this while trying to choose basketball or theater.

Applause - Lady Gaga: This is Sharpay's song because she does indeed live for the applause

Find these songs here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3JUlNadYtiRu3QH2feS9k1?si=6d03ed23101b4503 

Thank you for reading! I would absolutely love to hear your opinions, ratings, top characters, and ratings!

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Scream (1996)

 I recently rewatched Scream, one of my favorite movies so I figured it would be a great first review! Also, this will definitely contain spoilers after the review section so if you haven't seen it and you don't want spoilers only read the first two sections! Summary       Scream takes place in Woodsboro, California, and is centered around Sydney Prescott.  The town is hit by a string of murders, the targets being the teens of Woodsboro High School surrounding the anniversary of Sydney's mother's death (absolutely a coincidence). Sydney quickly becomes the focus of the investigation and the target of the killer. This film is a fantastic mix of comedy and thriller and an iconic 90s film. Scream is almost 2 hours long and directed by Wes Craven (other notable work includes Nightmare on Elm Street and The Hills Have Eyes) One Sentence Review Rating: 10/10  I absolutely love this film because of the way it blends horror with comedy as a parody of a horror movie...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: High School Musical 2

 While I've never seen the third one, usually I will choose to watch the second one over any of the three, this post will contain spoilers! High School Musical 2 Summary      The summer in between junior and senior year is happening and Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) and Ryan (Lucas Grabeel) Evans are going to relax at their family's country club while the rest of their peers' search for jobs. Sharpay still wants to be with Troy Bolton (Zac Efron), so she has him offered a job at the club, naturally he also helps all his friends, and girlfriend, Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) get jobs there as well. Sharpay tries to steal Troy away by giving him many gifts while tossing her brother Ryan to the side. Troy has to decide between accepting Sharpay's gifts and keeping his friends. One Sentence Review Rating: 6/10 While slightly better than the first, the movie is still not all that great.  My Thoughts      When people ask me about this film, which isn't often, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

About Me

 Sup! I don't know too much about blogs, so this is going to be a fun journey. A friend of mine had a book vlog a while back and I wrote for that once and it was pretty fun. I'm always told I don't know when to shut up about the film and to start a blog so I can bother people online about it. I love music, basically, all genres. Some of my favorite artists include Taylor Swift, Conan Grey, Queen, Lady Gaga, Fall Out Boy, and Keith Urban. Reading is also a big hobby of mine; Six of Crows is my favorite book, but I also love The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and The Hunger Games. One of my favorite things to do is to sit down and enjoy a nice movie or a couple episodes of a TV show before bed, but I don't really have people to talk about it to in extreme detail, hence the blog. My plan for this vlog is like an informal layout of my thoughts on films that I watch.  I watch everything from comedies to dramas to science fiction to documentaries. However, my favorite genre is...
Post a Comment
Read more