High School Musical 3: Senior Year

Jim Schembri started his review by saying, “TWEENS everywhere, brace yourselves for another mega-dose of old-school, clean-cut, family-friendly Disney values as the whole wholesome gang return to dance, jump and sing their way through their final year at the only public high school in America that doesn't have a metal detector.”

Singing basketball player Troy (Zac Efron) is still really in love with his fellow classmate Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens), but while their one-step at a time love for each other knows no bounds there is now the fear of separation.

Gabriella has to leave to get a first look at a potential college, meaning that Troy must have to separate on good terms. He also has to fight with choosing between what he wants and what his somewhat insistent father, played by Bart Johnson, wants.

Schembri noted, “The third instalment of the phenomenally successful - and purely accidental - Disney film franchise is the first to hit the cinema, and while it certainly has the candy-coloured innocent charm of the first two TV movies, the strain is beginning to show as the kids work extra-hard to fill the big screen frame with their youthful energy and playful scheming, with mean girl Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) still the only dramatically interesting character in the class.”

Alternately animated and expressive, “High School Musical 3: Senior Year,” released in 2008, overstays its welcome, being 20 minutes longer than it needs to, thanks mainly to a final congratulatory roll that just doesn’t want to end.

With that, it is hard not to feel some amount of affection for this confection, since we see the kids graduate and leave to college, where they will continue their education, meet new people and maybe see what love life is.

I know that this was the only theatrically released film in the trilogy, so you might be thinking why I didn’t review this last year? Because I wasn’t going to watch the trilogy out of order! It made more sense to wait until I saw the first two before watching this one or else I wouldn’t have understood anything.

As everyone might guess, I think this one is alright, but I’m not the right age group to see this. Even when these films were coming out when I was in high school, I wasn’t even interested in seeing them since I was at that age where I didn’t watch anything on the Disney Channel. I know there is an audience and fan base for these films, so if you liked the first two, then you can see this one. Everyone else can stay far away from this if you’re not into teen musicals.

Let’s take a break tomorrow from all these musicals and look at another Disney Channel TV show film in “Disney Channel Original Movie Month.”