Izzy’s First Musical: High School Musical 3 (Part 2, My Response)

I kid you not, for my thirty-first birthday last year, my dad paid extra to get me a High School Musical cake. It had lots of festive red frosting and a circular red High School Musical CD holder with the image on it of the six lead cast members jumping in the air (FYI, the cheap thing can’t actually hold CDs). I had never seen High School Musical (I don’t have cable or tweens), but if my dad picked that out for his musical-loving son, I figured it was time I get down to business.

I got High School Musical and High School Musical 2 from the library.

High School Musical is what it is. It’s a Grease rip-off that celebrates musicals and wholesomeness with little that is clever or original. It has some energetic dance numbers staged in the classic “imaginary audience” fashion of the 1930s and 1940s with cast members that display a wide range of musical abilities from impressive (Lucas Grabeel, who looks like he could pass for Cheyenne Jackson’s younger brother) to not so impressive (Vanessa Hudgens). At the same time, it’s not hard to see why kids (and a few adults) have eaten it up (though, as a middle school director I know pointed out, no one seems to question why the siblings are trying to get the romantic leads in the school play).

High School Musical 2 is a change in two ways. The music and choreography take a big step up with moves that are more energetic, complicated, and overall impressive, a variety of the numbers requiring more complicated moves. While the acting is still overall Nickelodeon-annoying, the same cast members seem to excel—Lucas Grabeel and Monique Coleman still being tops. Directed by Kenny Ortega, High School Musical 2 even has a fun homage to Esther Williams during Sharpay’s clever “Fabulous” number. Storywise, however, the movie falters. The original film’s story was nothing special, but at least it kept moving in a forward motion. Here, the plot begins is stagnate midway through and never really picks up steam.

For what it’s worth High School Musical 3 is a big step down from the other two films in both story and music. In plotting, there is very little happening, and the story almost entirely lacks forward motion. Instead of a strong central conflict that moves to a climax, the movie consists of loosely connected events that don’t really add up to anything. The plot seems a mish-mash of ideas, which may explain the void of logic in the series of events.

Oddly enough, the High School Musical series is more realistic than many other high school movies because of its desire to unite students rather than capitalize on perceived cliques and group stereotypes. For example, the overweight cheerleaders who are not bearing abs are pretty much a dead-on portrayal of every high school sports game I’ve been to. That said, any semblance of reality disappears in the structure of putting on a high school play. Characters drop in and out of the show at will, understudies are assigned for some characters and not for others, the understudies are deemed as important but never are rehearsed, and dedicated theatre students like Troy don’t even bother to show up for opening night. One major plot point involves a student missing out on the end of senior year to head off to a college camp, which, of course, is ludicrous. It’s as if the writers knew they were creating something intended for kids and didn’t bother to revise anything.

Musically, the show opens very weak. Instead of having a strong opening number (like “What Time Is It” from 2), the first song is garbled in a basketball game, unclearly staged and the lyrics muddled by the action. There’s a nice dance number for Troy and Gabrielle, and there’s some clever ideas in the junkyard number “The Boys are Back,” but it does nothing to rival the energy and staging of 2. Just as Ortega hearkened back to Esther Williams in 2, here he calls back to Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling in Royal Wedding (Ortega is too big a fan of old musicals for it to have come from Lionel Richie or NSync) in a stunning number feature Zac Efron. The number that really makes its mark, however, is the final number “High School Musical,” the only song to revival the hits from the past two movies.

What all this means is that I was bored out of my mind during High School Musical 3, simply because there was no forward motion in the plot and the numbers rarely dazzled in the way they did in High School Musical 2. I love getting to see any big screen musical packed with dancing and fun, but I only wish I didn’t spend so much of the movie wanting to leave.

That said, Izzy enjoyed it. As bored as I was, watching her dance along with Troy and Chad in the junkyard made it all worth the while. And that’s why I love the High School Musical series. Plot, intelligence, and music quality all seem so unimportant when what is there is creating a huge new audience for film and stage musicals at a level they understand.

the Broadway Mouth
January 16, 2009

Izzy’s First Musical: High School Musical 3 (Part 1, Her Response)

I’m not an expert in brain development, but I taught long enough that I’ve acquired some basic knowledge of how the brain grows. In short, young brains are infinitely malleable, and children soak up everything to which they are exposed, which is why children learn second languages much easier when they are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 than when they are 12 or 13. At very young ages, children’s minds are forming based upon what they need to know, and as they are exposed to new learning and new experiences, their brain forms new pathways to accommodate the learning, enabling them to take on more skills and knowledge. It’s a use it or lose it sort of thing.

Anyone who has been around young children knows what sponges they are. My niece (whom I will call Izzy for the sake of this column), as young at sixteen months, was intentional in how she copied things her mother would do. By twenty-seven months or so, she was copying phrases from her mother, wanted to wash dishes like her mother, make dinner like her mother, and so on. It’s like the television commercials tell us, children learn from the adults around them—be it how to discriminate, how to cope with sadness, how to handle anger, how to be in relationships, how to forgive, how to laugh, even how to walk and talk.

At some point, the brain slows down in the process of forming new pathways, and as the child ages, the ability to develop in some areas of the brain decreases (which explains why learning a new language at 13 is much harder than at 5). By the time we reach our late 20s, our brain begins to shed cells that we don’t use.

Bear with me, this is getting to musicals.

I am one of the most horribly uncoordinated people you will ever meet. As a teenager (when my athletic brother would delight in reminding me of this), I always thought it was just the way I was born—I was born to be the reader/writer/thinker of the family. But now that I know what I do about brain development, I realize that the athletic, coordinated, kinesthetic part of my brain never had a chance to develop. Whereas my brother somehow managed to get into sports (my parents weren’t so much “guiders” as they were “let the chips fall where they may” types when it came to fostering talents and skills, which is not a complaint or judgment but an observation on my part), my early memories are of my mom reading to me and of me taking delight in Disney book and tape sets. When you spend a lot of your time playing with Duplo blocks, green army men, and playing inactive games with your friends, you don’t develop a lot of physical coordination or skill.

This is exactly why I want Izzy to have a variety of exciting and interesting experiences even though she is only three. This is why I tried taking her to an art museum at two-and-a-half (we saw about two paintings before she was asking to go), to the zoo, and so on. I want her mind to be engaged and intrigued by new experiences from a very early age.

I have long been wanting to take Izzy to a musical, but obviously, at three, she still has a good four or five years before she’s ready for that. My favorite thing would be to take her to a final dress rehearsal of a high school musical so that she can experience the singing and dancing from a young, malleable age without the worry that she will interrupt the people around her. Not knowing any high school choreographers or directors well, this hasn’t happened.

That isn’t to say she hasn’t experienced movie musicals before. She loves Hairsrpay (when she was two and a few months, she would sing along to the “Oh oh oh”s in “Good Morning Baltimore”), The Little Mermaid, and Enchanted, and thanks to me, she’s been around as Dreamgirls has played (as well as a bevy of Disney animated musicals). But there’s something about live theatre that is more powerful. And if live theatre can’t be found, a musical on the big screen is an acceptable Plan B.

The perfect solution, then, was High School Musical 3 at the discount theater, where she could sit in the back and be easily removed if she caused a stir without great loss of money.

The narrative of the story didn’t particularly hold her attention. It didn’t take long before she got antsy, but let me tell you, she loved the musical numbers. This child has been dancing around since she learned to walk, and no matter how distracted she was during the dialogue, she was glued during the musical numbers. There’s a scene in the movie where Troy and Chad dance in a junkyard, and she was on her feet shaking her booty during the whole thing.

Yep, High School Musical 3 did the trick.

Obviously, I love musicals, and I want Izzy to love them to. It’s the same reason why my brother bought her ice skates and took her to a hockey game. Not yet having children of my own, I need to pass my love for musicals on to my niece. In a perfect world, I would have money to enroll her in a dance class and all that, but to me, this was really more about exposing her to the arts, allowing new pathways to form in her brain, to see exciting things in the world and to allow her to ponder them.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Take a kid to a musical or a play. It doesn’t even have to be Broadway (though, obviously, a splashy Broadway show or tour excites like nothing else possibly can). Once they are a theatergoing age, the younger you can get them there, the more a love of the art will develop. Kids need to see great theatre that excites them and fosters within them a lifelong pattern of supporting the arts. Form new pathways while you still can.

I have a pseudo nephew. When he was young, I always wanted to take him out places and show him a world he wasn’t getting at home, but I allowed my misperceptions (about over-stepping my boundaries with his mother’s live-in boyfriend—one experience of two that has caused me to see live-in relationships as an effective way to permanently damage children but that’s for another blog site) to hold me back. When I finally found the courage to overcome that, I treated him to the Broadway tour of Urinetown (complete with the cast recording, a souvenir program, and a fancy dinner), and it was a magical night. We still talk about that show, and whenever I can, I still take him to theatre (to date Thoroughly Modern Millie, On the Record, Brooklyn, a high school production of The Pajama Game, and a regional production of Altar Boyz).

I don’t know what will be touring when she gets to be of age to sit through a Broadway show without interrupting the people around her, but thinking of my beloved Izzy, I can’t help but be thankful for Wicked. Perhaps something else will come along, but if not, I would be thrilled with Wicked as Izzy’s First Broadway Musical.

the Broadway Mouth
January 14, 2009

Wildcats, Here We Go

Is it a sign that I'm getting old when I can't bring myself to go to High School Musical 3? I saw the first two on DVD from the library and found them pleasant enough, but they don't excite me by any means. Still, it is a big, splashy movie musical that will no doubt have great choreography and a measure of musical excitement. So yes, when I find someone who will be brave enough to go with me to this teeny-bopper delight, I'll see it.

Until then, I share with you a review of the movie from a certified musical theatre lover, to give you a musical fan's perspective on Senior Year.

the Broadway Mouth
October 28, 2008