Ah, the days of optimism!
It was the TV franchises first theatrically released film.
The opening title flares on screen, five words nestled into a giant 3.
Credit: Everett Collection
Were starting in medias res, midway through a championship game.
Then Troy gives another inspiring halftime speech with co-captain/BFF Chad Danforth (Corbin Bleu).
so loud that the whole world goes dark.
Disney Channel
The firstHigh School Musicalemerged as a phenomenon in 2006.
That director,Kenny Ortega, generated lots of playful choreography.
Songwriter David Lawrence crafted pop tunes with an old-fashioned wink, pilingtrendy Auto-Tuney warblingatop occasional piano glissandi.
Disney Channel
And the story was a demographic dream.
All the young stars were very energetic, and there was something pleasantly achievable aboutHigh School Musicals cheapo look.
You felt invited to join in like this production was only half-finished and could use some more extras.
Disney Channel
The results were big ratings and a hit soundtrack that human beings paid analog dollars to purchase.
There followedHigh School Musical 2, a somewhat loathsome gloss on the material.
Sharpay got villainized, and true fans know shes the morally ambiguous antihero.
Its based on their lives and theyre playing themselves, very much likeSynecdoche, New York.
Theyre high school sweethearts heading in different directions post-graduation.
(Cruel Stanford!)
Whatever: The storys just stringing together one ecstatic pop number after another.
And they waltz together through Can I Have This Dance?
on the school rooftop, exterior suburban nowhere stretching to the snowcapped mountains on the horizon.
Whereas Ortegas instincts inHSM3are fully hyperbolic.
At the end of Can I Have This Dance?
the heavens open, and rain falls in the desert.
The weather is emotionally reactive, see.
Late in the movie, Troy drives a thousand miles on prom night to be with Gabriella.
Spectacle carries them forward, and Ortega gives good spectacle.
WhereasHSM3comes to life in the big group numbers.
Halfway through Scream, basketballs rain down on Troy, for you see he ishauntedby basketball, people!
They were dating then, and then eventually they werent.
Its an all-time banger about ludicrous aspiration and is without question the most recognizable 2000s-ish aspect ofHSM3.
I want it all!
The school cafeteria transforms into a stage, Hollywood, Manhattan, a red carpet step-and-repeat colored neon magenta.
The other characters become background extras in the Rise of Sharpay.
Troy playacts the kind of rabid fandom Efron himself had researched up close.
Credit Efron for uncanny physicality.
This was perfect selfie form, children, before smartphones invented the frontal camera.
She begins in a position of absolute power, the supernova of the drama department.
She even gets a personal assistant, a freshman student named Tiara Gold (Jemma McKenzie Brown).
But how all occasions do inform against Sharpay.
Taylor (Monique Coleman) is going to Yale, to study political science.
Choreographer Ryan got one Juilliard scholarship, songwriter Kelsi (Olesya Rulin) got the other.
I dont want to say this is an unhappy ending for Sharpay.
Indeed, the prospect of seeing her as a super-glam drama club T.A.
is way more exciting than the actualBroadway-bound spin-offshe received.
But its a dose of reality amidHSM3s fanfare.
Her new ambition is to work part-time at the school she once dominated.
Her struggle, goofy as it is, looks real.
Real not really being a word you could use very often describingHSM3.
Ten years later, life has limited so many choices.
But back then, we wanted it all.
