High School Musical 3: Senior Year

In the last couple days, I've read several articles about how the younger generation is running smack into their first recession, a phenomenon they have never experienced in their lives. There's a bit of schaudenfreude in these pieces, but I can't help feeling sorry for the youngsters. They didn't make this mess of a world into which they have been thrust.

They were fed all the phony fruits of the consumer cornucopialand, and told they could "be anything." It's all the potential, baby. Just dream, and you can do it. The world is waiting for you to spread your wings.

I thought about these sad things while watching High School Musical 3: Senior Year at the discount cinema just north of Manchester. It was the first movie of three I saw on Thursday on a one-day viewing sprint.

I should have seen this movie two months ago. On election eve, I had the utterly perfect opportunity to see it in Peterborough, New Hampshire, the real location of Our Town (those who know me will understand why). But I decided instead that I just had to get home for the first wave of election returns. I should have known: always take the obvious opportunity. Impatience defeats me time and again. Because I didn't grab that chance, the movie stayed on my "to see" list for weeks and weeks, until it finally dwindled down to a single discount theater in New Hampshire.

A bit of disclosure: I saw the first one of this series on Netflix, but missed the second installment (so far). So I'll offer abbreviated commentary.

To wit, I loved the musical numbers, but I'm a fan of that kind of stuff. The best number in the first movie was the one on the basketball court, and this movie has two such numbers. The most spectacular ones in this installment, however, were "fantasy" numbers in which we depart from the "reality" of the high school itself, and then weave back into it. Busby Berkeley might not have been on the edge of his seat, but he would have been at least tapping his toe.

At times there was even a beautiful postmodern twist of having the musical numbers begin as fantasy but end up blending back into a reality of the high school drama club's stage show. It almost reminded me of Synecdoche, New York a couple of times. I loved it.

As for plot, it dispenses with the phony suspense right away in the first scene, when the basketball team wins its second state championship. This leaves the movie somewhat without a solid premise on which to build tension. What we get instead is a high school adaptation of A Chorus Line, both in a literal (on-stage) sense, and in the figurative reality of the movie world. Very clever indeed.

What do the characters want? They seemingly want to enjoy their last days of high school, and also to be in charge of their own destinies, to make their own choices. The sweetness and the sorrow, one could almost hear them singing.

The only plot tension in the traditional sense is competition over a scholarship to Julliard. I couldn't help rooting for Sharpay (the brilliant Ashley Tisdale), the misunderstood foil to the protagonist Troy, simply because she wants it the most. Troy gets to have it all. Why does he need this particular victory? The joke is that Tisdale is actually the most talented performer in the cast. Sharpay really is all that. Uh huh.

But those kids---they are so sweet, with their dreams. The world is waiting for them, waiting with a big open mouth...to swallow them whole. Kiss 2008 Good-bye!