High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008)

I remember when I first saw High School Musical 3: Senior Year and all these teenage girls, myself excluded, were screaming when Zac Efron made his first appearance on the screen. That's all I could remember about the film as I've never rewatched it. And I even have it on DVD. The reason? It's simply terrible.

This time around, the East High School kids are getting ready to graduate which means each will go their separate ways. Troy (Zac Efron) and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) are those having a tougher time as Troy is planning to attend the nearby University of Albuquerque and Gabriella wants to attend Stanford University in California. Meanwhile, Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) still plots to steal Troy from Gabriella and to get her part in the school Spring musical.

Excluding the college part, High School Musical 3: Senior Year essentially has the same plot as the two previous movies. It's still tremendously stupid, predictable and filled with nonsense --why on earth does Sharpay end up with Zeke at the end of each movie and yet at the beginning of the following movie she acts like she doesn't even know him, she still goes after Troy, and that poor guy tries to win her "heart" all over again? And the subplots, oh Jesus, they are terrible. There are hints all over High School Musical and High School Musical 2 that Ryan, Sharpay's twin brother, is gay and now he's developing a romance with Kelsy? What the actual fuck, Disney?!

The characters somehow manage to be even more shallow than they were in the previous movies of the series. Unfortunately, complexity isn't their only lack. They also are incredibly boring, not to mention the new characters who basically are clones of the original characters. They are made even worse by the cast. Other than delivering terrible performances as these kids can't act shit, the actors lack energy. There's a better chemistry between the main actors, but it alone is not enough to save the film.

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

As for the musical part of the film, it's pretty awful. All the songs just sound like those of the previous two movies, still very silly but not so catchy and fun. The dancing is beyond terrible as pretty much all they do is jumping. And there's a number, a Zac Efron solo, that looks like something straight out of Magic Magic. So that's appropriate for a kids movie, but having a gay character isn't?