Column:

'High School Musical 3' is over-modulated and over-processed

By Dan Moore

Published Oct. 27, 2008

Before I go on, I want to say that I liked "Enchanted." It's one of those one-of-my-best-friends-is-a-Disney-musical arguments, but it's important for me to say that I'm not dogmatically against fluffy, young-skewing musicals. If there's any heterosexual, college-aged male out there ready to trumpet a tween musical as likable or entertaining, it is this reviewer. But "High School Musical 3" is not bad because it's aimed at your younger sisters, or because it began its life as a TV movie - it's bad because it's terribly made. 

If you haven't kept up (and shame on you) "High School Musical 3" is the first theatrical appearance of Disney's unstoppable TV juggernaut, which chronicles the relationship between conflicted, dreamy basketball star Troy (he plays basketball - but he wants to act!) and Gabriella, his vaguely quirky sweetheart. Nothing ever keeps them apart in these movies, which have little use for conflict; it's more that things are always threatening to keep them apart. In this, the last leg of the trilogy, the threatening future is their college plans, but as with any musical - or any Disney Channel movie - the plot is hardly an issue; it's the string on which the musical numbers hang. And the musical numbers are where the film disappoints.

Viewers who don't have younger siblings are in for a shock when our heroes open their mouths. Any attempt at a natural sound, here, is thrown out the window; one moment they're talking, sounding normal, and the next an over-modulated, processed, mastered voice is roaring out. The voices themselves aren't any better. Zac Efron (Troy) seems more auto-tune than voice during most of his songs, and Vanessa Hudgens (Gabriella) uses a baby-doll whimper that would make Britney Spears uncomfortable.

What they're singing isn't any better. Musicals have become increasingly unnatural since the '60s because the form of song the musical is made for - pop standards composed by someone else - has been replaced in the popular conscience by singer-songwriter dominated genres. The result is that the songs in films like "HSM 3" attempt to adapt the standard tropes to rock and hip-hop styles, and get nowhere, existing in some musical ghetto and sounding unnatural for either form. The songs in "HSM 3" are standard fare, for this sort of thing; the drum machine beats and squealing guitars, in their desire to affect a youthful edge, come off sounding older and more out of touch than Gene Kelly singing "Singin' in the Rain."

If you liked "High School Musical" there's nothing here to scare you away; the songs are of the same quality, such as it is, and the movie-theater budget has allowed for some fun Busby Berkeley Lite set pieces and a cinematography that manages to break away from the stationary look that characterized the TV movies. But if you don't already have "Troy And Gabriella Forever" Henna-tattooed on your cheek, there's nothing for you here. There is nothing morally wrong or frustrating about a movie like this, which has enough pleasantness and clean-cut Mary Tyler Moore spunk to make Woody Allen giggle, and the backlash among the Hot Topic set is overkill to say the least. It's just a bad movie.