762. High School Musical (2006)

Starring: Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale

Director: Kenny Ortega

Running Time: 96 mins

High School Musical is an American film about the basketball star captain of a high school who meets a new girl, who shares his hidden love for music, and he shocks his team after he signs up to perform in the school play with his new friends.

Well, I think you know how cheesy and dumb this film is, but I’ve got to commend Disney’s success with this film, making a totally generic high school movie into an amazingly famous franchise that, for some reason, seems to stand out amongst the whole crowd of other totally identical films.

Anyway, I just think that this is another example of a boring, cheesy and consistently annoying ‘tween’ film, filled with really long, annoying drawn-out songs and frustrating performances from actors who I’ve seen can give so much more.

And that’s where I’ll start: the performances. Being a Disney Channel TV movie, it’s got all the terrible actors from those annoying sitcoms, but in their breakout performances, Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens really disappoint. I’ve not seen too much of Hudgens since this, apart from Spring Breakers, and she’s not as bad as you’d expect, but I definitely know that Zac Efron can be a decent actor, it’s just that he’s stuck in this generic role that doesn’t give him any room to do anything.

The story here is totally predictable, of course, and even in its attempts to mix up the story, it just gets preposterous, and then incredibly frustrating and annoying. Even worse is that you’ve got all of these tedious, irritatingly catchy songs popping up at every other minute, totally destroying the narrative of the film, and just making it an even worse thing to watch.

So, overall, this gets a 4.4, because despite being so successful, and impressively so, it’s just too annoying and poorly written to bear.