High School Musical without having to watch it!
A while back, Television Without Pity did recaps of High School Musical and High School Musical 2. They're pretty angry and hilarious. I'm not saying you should read them instead of watching the movies (although you maybe should), but you should totally read them. I am linking them here and also putting in some of my favorite excerpts. Because this is my journal, and I can.
High School Musical
This movie, it is this thing. And it has claws and fangs and mouse ears, and it will cut you. While singing.
Zac/Troy insists on taking "one more" shot, which he does. I'll tell you, he is so generically pretty, he looks like the prettiest seventh-grade girl in Ohio.
Best of all, Troy steps up and inserts an "Ohh-ohhh," at just the right moment. Which is so very like a high-school boy who's never sung in public before. It's the Portrait Of The Popcorn Idol As A Young Improviser Eager To Jam. They are grooving now, y'all. And then they're singing, and like all the rest of the music in this movie, the song is inoffensive but instantly forgettable, even though it addresses timeless concepts such as newness, what you feel in your heart, and "ooooh." The highlight comes when, at one crucial moment, Troy makes an awesomely hilarious face of quivering excitement, like he CANNOT BELIEVE that he and Gabi are singing this terrible song together at exactly this moment.
Inside, a snooty blonde looks at her GenericBerry as the world's most effeminate high-school boy toodles along beside her, smashing all the progress Rickie Vasquez ever made as he goes.
Let me tell you, I have known some theater bitches in my life, people, and nobody I know ever says "musicale." And they wouldn't. They'd be like, "Hmmm...no, that's entirely too twee to be used in connection with our production of The Music Man."
But the team joins in, and they're all dancing together, and it's so intensely uncool that it briefly feels like everything cool in the universe gave its life to try to breathe something edgy into this number, and it was all in vain.
To the degree the number is fun, it would still be better if it were a lot less stupid. Which I guess sums up the movie pretty well, so I shouldn't give it away this early.
Troy wants to talk: "Hey, Dad...did you ever think about trying something new, but were afraid of what your friends might think?" Coach Dad misses the obvious, which is that Troy is telling him he wants to date guys, and tells Troy that he can "go left" without worry. Actually, maybe that's code, and maybe Coach Dad does get it.
When Ryan shows up, we see that he is wearing a pink beret, which come on, he's not Perez Hilton; you've made your point.
And, of course, in perfect harmony, they sing the duet. Not corny and shitty like Sharpay and Ryan did, but corny and shitty in a totally new way. Specifically, Gabi performs the entire thing while staring moonily at nothing. At least Efron is moving his eyeballs around. Speaking of getting your head in the game: Wake up, Hudgens. Have some coffee. Have a Red Bull.
Ryan suspects that they're being "punk'd." He's a little unnaturally excited about the possibility of meeting Ashton Kutcher, and really, did we have to throw the gay stereotype into the movie about learning to love yourself the way you are? Effeminate boys have feelings, too.
A good musical needs one big, loud, unleashed number that kind of fills your heart with joy against your will, and sometimes they're great (see: "Marian The Librarian" in The Music Man), and sometimes they just are (see: this).
Next thing you know, Friend Of Troy is berating Troy some more about the callback as the two of them wander in the library stacks, where they have no apparent reason to be, because they hate books. Friend Of Troy lies that Troy is the one talking when the librarian comes in to bust them. With friends like Friend Of Troy, Troy does not need any Enemies Of Troy.
I must say, Sharpay is a brave girl to wear this fur-lined vest to school. Particularly with the crocheted newsboy cap.
It turns out that berating your friends into giving up their dreams and being really unhappy isn't necessarily as much fun as you'd think.
That will never make you happy, Gabi! Math doesn't love you back!
Everyone rejoices, and then a fight with Nerf basketballs breaks out, and I'm pretty sure that none of these people will ever have sex with each other at this rate.
FOT brings Sharpay over to the door to watch as, in the hallway, the basketball team arranges itself into a sort of pyramid, and the guys open their workout jackets to reveal shirts spelling out "GO DRAMA CLUB!" It's sort of cute the way they each yell out a letter, including little Efron, who yells, "Exclamation point!" The DQ opines darkly that it will be an "interesting afternoon." Sharpay looks evil. Ryan's trying to figure out what the shirts spell. I think he's as smart as the movie.
Sharpay and Ryan are doing their comical acting warm-up exercises, which actually include her doing a trust fall, which is a pretty nice touch, since it's appropriately lame and weirdly believable. You know, for them.
Sharpay and Ryan are called out to audition. They perform a "Latin" number with a lot of "Caliente!" and "Mirame!" and so forth. It's very cruise-ship, but it would be a bad cruise ship where the Latino population would be kind of pissed off and offended.
They really, really should have written a better song for the romantic climax. Really. Because this one is capital-T Terrible, and some of the other songs have been merely lame. If only this song were merely lame. I long for merely lame.
High School Musical 2
The alternative explanation for my current mood is that this movie is actually noticeably worse than the original High School Musical, which would disrupt my worldview, both because I can't conceive of High School Musical 2 being noticeably different from High School Musical and because I can't imagine anything being noticeably worse than High School Musical.
Poor Ryan, incidentally, has been gayed up even since HSM: Mothership, and is now sporting a pink shirt and a pink beret. If Barbie had a Dream Brother, this would be him.
It's kind of sad to find yourself thinking, "You know, the Hudge's lack of acting talent didn't really come into sharp relief until High School Musical 2."
And then they're going to kiss again, but FOT tells Troy, "Let's go." Wow. I'd call that a rather egregious case of cockblocking if I didn't assume that Troy is a Ken doll under there. So it's, like, smoothblocking.
The pinkness of the car kind of gives away that Sharpay and Ryan are inside -- it's probably his. The license plate says "FABULUS." It also turns out that there are "SE" initials on the hood, so I must grudgingly admit the car is hers.
But the absolute best part, as pointed out by noted pal Jane Wiedlin's Boyfriend (who watched this for no compensation, and therefore needs a doctor, I am thinking), is how the song repeats "work, work, work it out" until you feel like maybe nobody knew any other words to include, or nobody knew any other words at all, or somebody wrote the whole thing using a defective magnetic poetry kit where all verbs were replaced with "work," all pronouns with "it," and all prepositions with "out," and then when the music is finally over and the dance stops, Troy immediately turns to FOT and says, "So can we work this out?" Because he's still wondering. Goddamn, Troy. What do you think the entire song you just sang was about? Unsurprisingly, having just repeated "we can work it out" in song four hundred times, FOT replies, "Yeah, we can work it out." I'M SO GLAD WE GOT THAT CLEARED UP.
As much as I dislike the choreography in this series, I must say, watching Efron and La Hudge attempt improvisational frolicking with all the grace of...well, I was going to say "trained bears," but it's more like "untrained bears"...actually does make me miss the choreography.
When the song is over, the rest of the gang begs Troy to do the talent show, and he says, "Maybe...we can work this out." And then there's a pause, and poor Zac Efron seriously looks like he wants to commit ritual suicide as he says, "But only...if we're all in this together." Wow. Barfing now. Stand back. It's one of those moments where you can sense the actor's discomfort, and the fact that he desperately wants to get past that line, because he dreads it like a bikini wax.
The family takes off with Troy, leaving FOT behind, but also leaving Ryan behind. Poor Ryan. His father is rejecting him. Hey, you know, maybe if his "cap" were straighter.
So in a way, Troy has just become Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, and the Evanses want to set him up in a great apartment so they can do it with him whenever they're in town. If you see what I mean.
"It doesn't seem like new stuff," she says. "It seems like a new Troy." He looks like either (1) he is sad; or (2) he doesn't remember that his name is "Troy," so he doesn't know what she's talking about.
Troy then picks up his phone on the bench and calls Gabi, but she's not near her phone, because she's busy socializing with Ryan and FOT, who have traded hats and are therefore going steady.
Later, Mama Evans bosses Taylor and Martha as they try to arrange flowers for...the talent show? Which isn't tonight, but is soon? I don't know. I'm kind of frustrated by the fact that I can successfully follow the plot of The Wire, while this makes me feel like I'm watching an un-subtitled show in Mandarin Chinese.
And now: ANGRY TROY! When provoked, he turns into The Incredible Hunk! Troy stomps across the...golf course...in time to the stompy drums. And right there on the green, he starts to dramatically sing and gesture about how he wants to listen to his own heart and shut everyone out. It's like a stupider version of Kevin Bacon imitating himself in Footloose when he was on Will and Grace. This is a real tour de dork, in which Troy performs a song called "Bet On It" (chorus: "Bet On It Bet On It Bet On It Bet On It") with all the finesse of a dinner-theater Fiddler On The Roof. I have to say, I suspect this is the first bad-ass song to feature a golf break in the middle. I've never seen anyone approach a water hazard so very, very angrily. And then he sees his reflection, just like Olivia Newton-John in Grease! This is amaaaazing, you guys.
High School Musical
This movie, it is this thing. And it has claws and fangs and mouse ears, and it will cut you. While singing.
Zac/Troy insists on taking "one more" shot, which he does. I'll tell you, he is so generically pretty, he looks like the prettiest seventh-grade girl in Ohio.
Best of all, Troy steps up and inserts an "Ohh-ohhh," at just the right moment. Which is so very like a high-school boy who's never sung in public before. It's the Portrait Of The Popcorn Idol As A Young Improviser Eager To Jam. They are grooving now, y'all. And then they're singing, and like all the rest of the music in this movie, the song is inoffensive but instantly forgettable, even though it addresses timeless concepts such as newness, what you feel in your heart, and "ooooh." The highlight comes when, at one crucial moment, Troy makes an awesomely hilarious face of quivering excitement, like he CANNOT BELIEVE that he and Gabi are singing this terrible song together at exactly this moment.
Inside, a snooty blonde looks at her GenericBerry as the world's most effeminate high-school boy toodles along beside her, smashing all the progress Rickie Vasquez ever made as he goes.
Let me tell you, I have known some theater bitches in my life, people, and nobody I know ever says "musicale." And they wouldn't. They'd be like, "Hmmm...no, that's entirely too twee to be used in connection with our production of The Music Man."
But the team joins in, and they're all dancing together, and it's so intensely uncool that it briefly feels like everything cool in the universe gave its life to try to breathe something edgy into this number, and it was all in vain.
To the degree the number is fun, it would still be better if it were a lot less stupid. Which I guess sums up the movie pretty well, so I shouldn't give it away this early.
Troy wants to talk: "Hey, Dad...did you ever think about trying something new, but were afraid of what your friends might think?" Coach Dad misses the obvious, which is that Troy is telling him he wants to date guys, and tells Troy that he can "go left" without worry. Actually, maybe that's code, and maybe Coach Dad does get it.
When Ryan shows up, we see that he is wearing a pink beret, which come on, he's not Perez Hilton; you've made your point.
And, of course, in perfect harmony, they sing the duet. Not corny and shitty like Sharpay and Ryan did, but corny and shitty in a totally new way. Specifically, Gabi performs the entire thing while staring moonily at nothing. At least Efron is moving his eyeballs around. Speaking of getting your head in the game: Wake up, Hudgens. Have some coffee. Have a Red Bull.
Ryan suspects that they're being "punk'd." He's a little unnaturally excited about the possibility of meeting Ashton Kutcher, and really, did we have to throw the gay stereotype into the movie about learning to love yourself the way you are? Effeminate boys have feelings, too.
A good musical needs one big, loud, unleashed number that kind of fills your heart with joy against your will, and sometimes they're great (see: "Marian The Librarian" in The Music Man), and sometimes they just are (see: this).
Next thing you know, Friend Of Troy is berating Troy some more about the callback as the two of them wander in the library stacks, where they have no apparent reason to be, because they hate books. Friend Of Troy lies that Troy is the one talking when the librarian comes in to bust them. With friends like Friend Of Troy, Troy does not need any Enemies Of Troy.
I must say, Sharpay is a brave girl to wear this fur-lined vest to school. Particularly with the crocheted newsboy cap.
It turns out that berating your friends into giving up their dreams and being really unhappy isn't necessarily as much fun as you'd think.
That will never make you happy, Gabi! Math doesn't love you back!
Everyone rejoices, and then a fight with Nerf basketballs breaks out, and I'm pretty sure that none of these people will ever have sex with each other at this rate.
FOT brings Sharpay over to the door to watch as, in the hallway, the basketball team arranges itself into a sort of pyramid, and the guys open their workout jackets to reveal shirts spelling out "GO DRAMA CLUB!" It's sort of cute the way they each yell out a letter, including little Efron, who yells, "Exclamation point!" The DQ opines darkly that it will be an "interesting afternoon." Sharpay looks evil. Ryan's trying to figure out what the shirts spell. I think he's as smart as the movie.
Sharpay and Ryan are doing their comical acting warm-up exercises, which actually include her doing a trust fall, which is a pretty nice touch, since it's appropriately lame and weirdly believable. You know, for them.
Sharpay and Ryan are called out to audition. They perform a "Latin" number with a lot of "Caliente!" and "Mirame!" and so forth. It's very cruise-ship, but it would be a bad cruise ship where the Latino population would be kind of pissed off and offended.
They really, really should have written a better song for the romantic climax. Really. Because this one is capital-T Terrible, and some of the other songs have been merely lame. If only this song were merely lame. I long for merely lame.
High School Musical 2
The alternative explanation for my current mood is that this movie is actually noticeably worse than the original High School Musical, which would disrupt my worldview, both because I can't conceive of High School Musical 2 being noticeably different from High School Musical and because I can't imagine anything being noticeably worse than High School Musical.
Poor Ryan, incidentally, has been gayed up even since HSM: Mothership, and is now sporting a pink shirt and a pink beret. If Barbie had a Dream Brother, this would be him.
It's kind of sad to find yourself thinking, "You know, the Hudge's lack of acting talent didn't really come into sharp relief until High School Musical 2."
And then they're going to kiss again, but FOT tells Troy, "Let's go." Wow. I'd call that a rather egregious case of cockblocking if I didn't assume that Troy is a Ken doll under there. So it's, like, smoothblocking.
The pinkness of the car kind of gives away that Sharpay and Ryan are inside -- it's probably his. The license plate says "FABULUS." It also turns out that there are "SE" initials on the hood, so I must grudgingly admit the car is hers.
But the absolute best part, as pointed out by noted pal Jane Wiedlin's Boyfriend (who watched this for no compensation, and therefore needs a doctor, I am thinking), is how the song repeats "work, work, work it out" until you feel like maybe nobody knew any other words to include, or nobody knew any other words at all, or somebody wrote the whole thing using a defective magnetic poetry kit where all verbs were replaced with "work," all pronouns with "it," and all prepositions with "out," and then when the music is finally over and the dance stops, Troy immediately turns to FOT and says, "So can we work this out?" Because he's still wondering. Goddamn, Troy. What do you think the entire song you just sang was about? Unsurprisingly, having just repeated "we can work it out" in song four hundred times, FOT replies, "Yeah, we can work it out." I'M SO GLAD WE GOT THAT CLEARED UP.
As much as I dislike the choreography in this series, I must say, watching Efron and La Hudge attempt improvisational frolicking with all the grace of...well, I was going to say "trained bears," but it's more like "untrained bears"...actually does make me miss the choreography.
When the song is over, the rest of the gang begs Troy to do the talent show, and he says, "Maybe...we can work this out." And then there's a pause, and poor Zac Efron seriously looks like he wants to commit ritual suicide as he says, "But only...if we're all in this together." Wow. Barfing now. Stand back. It's one of those moments where you can sense the actor's discomfort, and the fact that he desperately wants to get past that line, because he dreads it like a bikini wax.
The family takes off with Troy, leaving FOT behind, but also leaving Ryan behind. Poor Ryan. His father is rejecting him. Hey, you know, maybe if his "cap" were straighter.
So in a way, Troy has just become Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, and the Evanses want to set him up in a great apartment so they can do it with him whenever they're in town. If you see what I mean.
"It doesn't seem like new stuff," she says. "It seems like a new Troy." He looks like either (1) he is sad; or (2) he doesn't remember that his name is "Troy," so he doesn't know what she's talking about.
Troy then picks up his phone on the bench and calls Gabi, but she's not near her phone, because she's busy socializing with Ryan and FOT, who have traded hats and are therefore going steady.
Later, Mama Evans bosses Taylor and Martha as they try to arrange flowers for...the talent show? Which isn't tonight, but is soon? I don't know. I'm kind of frustrated by the fact that I can successfully follow the plot of The Wire, while this makes me feel like I'm watching an un-subtitled show in Mandarin Chinese.
And now: ANGRY TROY! When provoked, he turns into The Incredible Hunk! Troy stomps across the...golf course...in time to the stompy drums. And right there on the green, he starts to dramatically sing and gesture about how he wants to listen to his own heart and shut everyone out. It's like a stupider version of Kevin Bacon imitating himself in Footloose when he was on Will and Grace. This is a real tour de dork, in which Troy performs a song called "Bet On It" (chorus: "Bet On It Bet On It Bet On It Bet On It") with all the finesse of a dinner-theater Fiddler On The Roof. I have to say, I suspect this is the first bad-ass song to feature a golf break in the middle. I've never seen anyone approach a water hazard so very, very angrily. And then he sees his reflection, just like Olivia Newton-John in Grease! This is amaaaazing, you guys.