High School Musical (2006)

Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) is the star player of the East High Wildcats, a high school basketball team. Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens) is the new girl at school, having just moved to the area with her mother. When the two of them meet at a karaoke party – and end up singing a duet together – they both realise that not only can they sing, but they actually sound quite good together.

Meeting up again at school at the beginning of the new school year, the two of them end up auditioning for the school musical, and getting in!

For Troy, this may mean the end of his basketball career, as playing the lead in a musical is not exactly the most sport-friendly pastime he could be involved in. In fact, he tries to hide the fact that he can sing, and sing well.

Not to mention that Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale) and her brother Ryan (Lucas Grabeel) always play the leads in any school production, and they are not happy that someone else is in the spotlight now.

Enough of the plot description, let’s get to the rest of the review.

The high point of this film is clearly the musical numbers, as one might expect with a musical. What you might not always expect is that the musical numbers are the only high point of this film.

The storyline is fairly basic, to say the least. This was originally a made-for-TV movie for the Disney Channel, and it shows. I don’t think it would spoil the ending too much to say that Troy and Gabriella end up together, and that of course the team – still led by Troy – somehow manage to win the championship game, of course with a goal scored at the last minute, yada yada yada, you know the rest.

The direction – or more specifically, the choreography – by Kenny Ortega, is good enough to allow viewers to enjoy the film for the duration of its running time, but there isn’t much to the film that will stay with you afterwards.

This film did spawn two sequels, both of which in my opinion were better than this first offering.

The songs – by David Lawrence – are catchy, and well-written within the genre of the film musical.

The cast can sing and dance well enough to pull it off as well, which I believe is why most of them were cast, rather than for their acting ability. I don’t mean to criticise, as most of the cast have appeared in other films, in which we can see that they do have the ability to act well, it’s just not as present or perhaps as developed in this film, at a time when most of them were just starting their careers.

Please don’t think I’m saying this is not a good film. It is enjoyable, and you will find the song and dance numbers enjoyable (if you like musicals, of course!). It’s just not the best musical out there.

5 out of 10.