Movie: "High School Musical 3"
Year: 2009
Rated: G
Genre: Comedy
Directed by: Kenny Ortega
Writing credits: Peter Barsochinni

Reviewer: Max Burbank
Posted: 4/29/2009

Plot: Oh good lord, how will them Wildcats manage to priorities their commitments to themselves and each other in this, THEIR SENIOR YEAR?!? With college on the horizon do these well scrubbed untroubled youth really have time to PUT ON A MUSICAL!? They will if the musical just happens to be about SENIORS PUTTIN’ ON A MUSICAL!!! And WHO put in an application to JULIARD for TROY without his knowledge? Does someone think he’s GAY?!? SPOILER ALERT! Everything turns out all right in the end and the whole senior class graduates without even one tragic car crash death the week before graduation.

Review: Oh, yes, my little friends, I didn’t just go there, I bought real estate and came back with a damn fine tan. Screw all a ya’s, ‘cause I had myself a howling good time seeing this movie with my daughters and enjoyed as much IF NOT MORE than they did. Why? Because I am ahead of the curve, baby. Sure it’s cool to watch Beach Blanket Bingo and laugh your ass off at the whacky semi-aware antics of Franky and Annette, but Troy and whats-her-face are OUR Franky and Annette (Well my kids, really, I’m kind of old) RIGHT NOW! It took Conan to tell you how cool ‘Dirty Dancing’ was, well I am telling you right now, High School Musical Trois BLEW ME OUT OF MY SEAT AND MY MIND! I saw it opening night, natch, but I hadda wait this long for the experience to boil down before I laid it on you. Unless I’ve already reviewed this movie in some sort of black out of sheer delight, which is always possible.

The opening moment is well worth the price of a ticket. Shot number one, without prelude on the big scfreen, Zac Effron’s MASSIVE SWEATING MUG FILLING THE ENTIRE SCREEN! I could only have enjoyed this more if it had been filmed in IMAX 3-D. And wait for it, beads of sweat at least a foot across are rolling down Zacky’s face in SUPER SLOW-MO!! My word to God, it’s like an epiphany. And then mere minutes later when Vanessa Hudgkins pert little body spikes up all alone and spot lit amongst a see of fan cards held over the heads of every single other person so that you know Troy is seeing her not with normal human vision BUT WITH THE YES OF HIS TEENAGE BASKETBALL PLAYIN’ MUSICAL THEATER SINGIN’ SOUL and she shouts “TROOOOOOOOOOOY!” well, I’m not ashamed to say I was shouting it along with her. Just, you know, in my heart, so as not to mortify my kids who were having a hard enough time with the squeals of ecstasy emerging from between my clenched teeth every few seconds.

I am so sorry, I totally don’t care what’s intentionally funny and what’s just an accident about this movie (and don’t tell me the boys at Disney aren’t aware at least some of the time of the multiple levels this shit plays on), I am like a gerbil in a dust bath, baby, I just can’t get enough! The intense passion and commitment every actor in this movie puts into the momentous soul wrenching conflict over what’s more important, Theatre or Basketball would surely be more appropriate to a movie about the Nurembergh trials, but don’t you see, that’s wherein the wonder lies. That friction between such God damn BIG acting over decisions that everybody knows they won’t even recall by their third week of college is marvelous.

Am I getting through to you? Do you see I am post Irony? This movie made me feel like a Queen at a Judy Garland festival, and I am man enough to tell you it is quite a feeling and old enough that I don’t feel the sick guilt I felt back in the day when I secretly enjoyed ‘Footloose’.

Okay, okay. On the small screen it will never be the same, but if you get liquored up real good, eat a whole box of Ho-Ho’s and sit less than a foot from your TV you’ll get something of the sensation I had. I promise. And let me know how it goes.

Overall rating:
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)