Bloodless Coup

High School Musical 2

So a few weeks ago I finally watched High School Musical. The horror. Well, not entirely. As I told Ryan at the time, while I found it largely horrible, and reinforcing every norm Disney usually pushes down our society's collective throat, it did have a few saving graces - especially Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) and Ryan (Lucas Grabeel). They were eminently more entertaining and watchable than the lead duet. So since I then learned that Sharpay and Ryan's characters had much more to do in High School Musical 2 (they were terribly underutilized in the first film), I decided, eh, why the hell not. Those two are entertaining, and it's summer, so I might as well give the second movie a try.

Turns out it is indeed a better movie. Now that's not saying much. The gender, race, and sexual politics of the film is still straight out of the most conservative take on the 1950's. And some of the actors are just appallingly bad (whoever plays Kelsi apparently is convinced that "acting" means making your eyes bigger and bigger to convey emotion). Just like in the first film Vanessa Hudgens is so lacking in charisma that you kind of forget she's there (I'm guessing she was cast primarily for her voice - and perhaps to a degree for her ethnicity). And of course this isn't the kind of movie in which you should expect things like plot continuity. But once again Ms. Tisdale and Mr. Grabeel save it from being a total waste of time. Actually I'm kind of surprised Grabeel hasn't become a bigger name since these films hit. The film's best bit, as was the case in the first film, is Sharpay's big production number. This time it involves Zac Efron, and not Grabeel. While I don't think it's as entertaining as the one in the first film, Efron getting more and more embarrassed and horrified at being caught up on the over-the-top display is pretty funny. As to Efron, obviously the centerpiece of both these films, well, I sort of get it. I mean I think he's better in Hairspray than in these. But you definitely see talent and charisma, and he plays the star role as he's supposed to, low-hanging Diesels and all.