High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008) -

At once appallingly bad and delightfully brain-numbing. This exuberant "conclusion" to the hugely popular trilogy brings the tv-movie phenomenon to the big screen with decidedly mixed results. The basic conceit of the franchise -- that the contest over "who rules the school" between the familiar factions of The Brains and The Brawns can only be resolved through elaborate musical production numbers -- guides the proceedings here, albeit with the stakes somewhat heightened as the central romance between Troy (a winning Zac Efron) and Gabriella (a wan Vanessa Hudgens) is threatened by the geographical trauma of college. Moreover, our charismatic protagonist is forced to consider a choice between basketball and theatre. What oh what will he do? HSM3 is, however, a complete fabulation, blithely divorced from such banal realities like school calendars (a 3-week college orientation during the school year?), financial aid (targeted scholarships capable of footing the bill at Yale, Stanford, Julliard, or Berkeley?), and interstate road travel (that truck made it from ABQ to Palo Alto in less than a day?). But, upon brief reflection, I realized that HSM3 is a franchise that shares a good deal in common with James Bond: the thinnest narrative thread, itself an implausibly grandiose conceit, gathers a collection of eye-popping set pieces which are largely forgotten and which only serve to move the plot forward in the simplest of ways. I found this comparison helpful, in that it helped me to appreciate the pleasures of HSM3 as something other than a broadway musical aesthetic (ie. in which the musical moments are transcendent moments in which the feeling reaches a height which can only manifest through the convergence of song and dance). In this kind of musical, the musical numbers are not so much about character, story or emotion but are instead the sissy/princess equivalent of a car chase. Thrilling, fun, forgettable -- all about the eye-popping spectacle, ideally leaving the audience to catch their breath during the subsequent dialog scene and ready themselves for the next explosive musical interlude. Following this formula, HSM3 is generally effective. (The only really unfortunate piece is that the musical is generic and uninteresting, so much so that it's nearly impossible to discern one song from the other, let alone remember a melody or lyric after the spectacle has finished.) The other really unfortunate thing: the intervening years since the first franchise's installment, as well as the amplified scale of the big screen, only serves to underscore disparities among the ensemble. Basically, Zac Efron is a star. His limits as a singer, actor and dancer are there, but he commands the screen. Watching him "opposite" Vanessa Hudgins is just sorta sad; his charisma simply dwarfs hers. (This poses something of a narrative problem, in that the Gabriella character is ostensibly the catalyst for all the social heirarchy disruption that happens in the series.) And where Zac Efron's talent and charisma have grown with, even matured with, him as the series has progressed, Corbin Bleu's has not -- Bleu's competent and charismatic, but seemingly stuck in an increasingly ill-fitting adolescent mode while Efron wears his mild maturity (both physically and persona-wise) with an easy grace. Among the ensemble, Lucas Grabeel continues to carry an impressive intelligence, wit and spark in what is an incoherent character. Likewise, Ashley Tisdale is a delightful comedic presence, clearly capable of handling much better material. The rest? Appealling but forgettable. I'm really glad I saw this film on the big screen, even though my screening circumstances -- among a near-capacity crowd at the dollar theatre -- only made the gaps in the spectacle more conspicuous. (During nearly every dialogue scene, the sound of mewling newborns and infants inspired me to lean over to my screening partner and whisper: High School Musical makes small children CRY!) And finally, the part I wasn't really expecting to see: this is a text with all kinds of protoqueer possibility. Of course, the Grabeel's notoriously crypto-gay character and Tisdale's drag-queen-ala-MissPiggy are obvious for the baby fags. But the part I found most fascinating is how much Bleu and Efron can be read as babydykes: their look, their relationship, their outfits. The homosocial erotics between Troy and Chad are not so much gay as they are lesbian, and it's a fascinating spectacle at times. All told, an effective franchise pic, aptly revealing both the pleasures and the limits of its formula-dependent genre.