'High School Musical 3: Senior Year' keeps a franchise on track
MOVIE REVIEW
Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale are on the big screen this time, with more expansive musical numbers.
Though the previous two installments were made specifically for television, "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" finds the mega-hit franchise moving to movie theaters. The director and co-choreographer of all three pictures, Kenny Ortega, does have a background in theatrical features, as choreographer of such (ahem) classics as "Xanadu" and "Dirty Dancing," while among his previous feature directing efforts is "Newsies," a knockabout musical about an 1899 child labor dispute.
Yet what does the average squealing "HSM" fan care about such details? The central performers (Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale) have become megastars to the tween set, complete with real-world scandals and gossip. The film's story -- it's senior year, there's a show to put on and colleges to apply to, decisions to be made -- puts them cleanly on display in all their fresh-scrubbed, impeccably lighted and styled glory.
As expected, any romance in the film comes from a distinctly pre-adolescent point of view, in which cuddling in a backyard hammock and a closed-mouth kiss is as heavy as it gets between a boy and girl. As shown in the very first shot of the film -- Efron's face in tight close-up, sweaty and panting -- as well as the astonishing precision of keeping the hemlines of Hudgens' and Tisdale's skirts just so, the film trades in the sort of innocently teasing sex appeal that the Disney brand has specialized in at least since Annette Funicello was fitted for her first Mouseketeer sweater.
'High School Musical 3' review: The review of "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" in Friday's Calendar section said that at the end of the film, students were heading off to a variety of colleges, among them the University of Arizona. In fact, the film refers to the University of Albuquerque, a fictional school.
As the film ends, some of the kids are heading off to Juilliard, Berkeley, Yale, Stanford and the University of Arizona, but never fear, as there are some new, younger characters introduced in the story to keep the next film (should there be one) with some grounding at good old East High. For those scoring at home, the third entry in the "High School Musical" series is better than the second but doesn't quite sustain the unvarnished, giddy highs of the first.
The "HSM" series has always been playful and high-spirited, with a refreshing emphasis on collective action and the importance of group effort over the individual, and there's nothing in "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" to upset the formula.
Olsen is a freelance writer and critic.
calendar@latimes.com
