The greatest children's films can be appreciated by adults, too, but a movie that only a kid could truly appreciate isn't necessarily a bad thing. 2006's High School Musical has broad performances, simplistic dialogue, and cheap morality. But despite its creepy, narrow portrait of normalcy, it avoids any especially annoying plot contrivances and could conceivably be a happy diversion for someone between four and fourteen years of age. The costumes have bright colours, the actors use broad facial expressions, and the ideas are simple enough for someone just becoming acquainted with the basics of human interaction to understand. This might not be a particularly enriching experience for a child but probably not a damaging one, either. It might be as bad as bread is supposedly for ducks. A sort of empty carb.
High School Musical was made for the Disney Channel and I remember tv shows and movies like it going back to the '80s. All existing within narrow situation formulae, usually on soundstages, they had a certain level of production quality higher than shows on other channels but with writing more formulaic and less remarkable than the best of shows on other channels, including Disney shows. As a kid, I knew if I wanted good, new Disney programming, I had to look for DuckTales or Darkwing Duck on ABC. But somehow, eventually, in the tidepool of tapwater, tiny random mutations occurred to produce a genuine success in High School Musical.
It's too different from Romeo and Juliet to legitimately claim to have been based on Shakespeare's play but it is a Romeo and Juliet kind of story, about two kids who experience instant attraction. But their two cliques don't disapprove of them on the grounds of who they are but on the grounds of what they want to do together, which is appear in the high school musical. Troy (Zac Efron) is supposed to be the basketball star and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) is supposed to be the nerd. She's just transferred to the school and complains to her mom about how she doesn't want to be seen as the freaky genius at this school, too.
I suspect it's characters like Gabriella that have led to this generation of college students being unable to admit to not being geniuses. Between rampant cheating, constant bragging, and bullshit deconstructionist humanities courses, everyone's trying like mad to have some semblance of natural genius so they can pretend to be overcoming shame about it.
Hudgens doesn't dress like a nerd. No-one dresses like anything in the movie, everyone wears basically the same level of conservative tops and pants. She also gives a particularly bad performance--there is not a single member of the supporting cast who isn't better than her. She's always got this vacant, sleepy expression on her face like she was heavily sedated before every take.
I wasn't much more impressed with Zac Efron at first but he gets better as the film goes on, rising to a level of loud, sitcom competence. Sitcompetence, if you will.
There are a few dopey contrivances to make trouble between the lovers, like Troy being secretly recorded by his friends trashtalking Gabriella in a way that doesn't seem remotely plausible. But there is a sweetness in the simplicity of their relationship. I kind of liked Gabriella comparing it to making friends in kindergarten. Since part of the movie's target audience seems to be kindergartners, this seems a nice nod of respect to the viewer.
There's a musical number about how risky it is to show interest in things outside of your club or clique, which is kind of ironic considering how homogeneous everything else is about the movie.
High School Musical is available on Disney+.
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