High school musical - 2006

I love it. Maybe not as I’d have loved it when I was sixteen, but close enough. I like the actors enough, specially Efron; I like the music, I like the fact that the songs move the story forward, the words explain their feelings, what is going on; I love the message: if the theme ‘choose who you want to be, follow your dreams, decide for yourself what you want to become’ is nothing new, here I like how it is posed, meaning that they don’t have to choose, it’s not ‘do this or do that, your own choice’, it’s more ‘you can do this but if you want you can also do that, feel free to be everything you like’. She doesn’t stop studying and he doesn’t give up basketball. Yes, Troy’s dad was a player and is now his coach, but Troy’s not forced into it. He loves it. He wasn’t living a false life, before, playing simply to please his father, he was always his true self, only now he has discovered a new side of himself, something else he likes to do. It starts on vacation, with Troy Bolton(Zac Efron)’s family and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) and her mom spending new year’s eve at the same place. Gabriella spends her time reading, and Troy playing basketball with his dad, while both mothers are all ‘party!! You must go!’ so they go. As it happens, there’s karaoke going on while waiting for the new year, and the singers are chosen by who-knows-who flashing the spotlight at them. Neither Troy or shy Gabriella feel excited; he starts singing, then motions away when suddenly he hears here singing and he loves it so he stays and they sing together “anything can happen when you take a chance-this could be the start of something new”. Now, in normal life they would have never seen each other again, but being this a movie they end up in the same class! She changed school, she and her mom just moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and without knowing it she not only applies at the same school, but she’s even in the same class (by the way, in movies a one-hour-lesson lasts more or less five minutes :-/ when I went to school it lasted forever! but then, we didn’t do musicals either, not that I would have auditioned anyway). A new school musical is about to start, auditions are open. They are uncertain if they want to do it or not until  the last moment, when she goes for it and he follows. He tried not to think about it in a nice coreography during practice: “keep your head in the game”, but he liked it so much when they sang together that he wants to do it again. The result is that musical queen and king, Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) and her brother Ryan Evans (Lucas Grabeel) now have competition. Another consequence is that now everybody knows they’re listed for the callback audition and apparently this upsets a lot of people. Mr Bolton can’t talk about nothing else but basketball, so Troy can’t talk to him. He doesn’t know what to do. Everybody’s like “stick to the stuff you know, stick to the status quo” and the team players team up with the decathlon team to end this. Madness breaks loose and the players trick Troy into saying he doesn’t care about the musical or Gabriella, only about the game, while her ‘friends’ show it all to her. She’s hurt, and here they put a Vanessa Hudgens-videoclip where she alone sings how it was all just a fairytale but now her heart’s empty. Troy doesn’t understand why she won’t talk to him anymore, and is very upset and hurt. He can’t concentrate and plays very badly, and she doesn’t do any better. I like the scene when they meet at lunch, she walks away and he looks so hurt. Seeing how sad they are the friends try to make amends and reveal all the truth. Troy makes peace with Gabriella. At the end, the memorable day arrives. Because of Sharpay (is this a real name?) callbacks are moved to the same day of the game and the decathlon, but the kids all work together to interrupt both to give them time to go to the callbacks. Gabriella is suddenly too scared, because she plays the nice, shy little girl, although she had no problem singing on new years’ eve, and the only difference is that they didn’t know her, otherwise it’s the same situation: on stage, lights, microphone, people staring at her. Troy goes ‘look at me’ on her and they sing together and all applaud, then he wins the game, she wins her competition and all gather together for the final party. When did Gabriella put on that red dress? Anyway. Zeke wins Sharpay over with his cookies. They are all friends, total happy ending. I really like it. Only two things bother me. Hudgen’s videoclip, and the decathlon-practice-scenes, that looked to fake and unreal. The line I liked most is Troy’s answer, when his father tries to ‘reason’ with him and tells him “you’re the playmaker, not a singer” and we’ve often seen scenes like this, where the kid is supposed to answer ‘that’s not who I am, that’s who you want me to be’, but it’s not Troy’s case because he’s not forced into basketball, he really loves it, but there’s no reason why it should be ‘his only thing’, so Troy replies “did you ever think that maybe I could be both?”. I love that line, it’s my favourite.