A cotton candy treat from Kenny and Zac

This Disney musical is completely bland and senseless, and perfect uplifting good fun. The songs and the singing styles aren't any advance over Fame, the 80's movie and TV series. It's a throwback, and its inexplicable, unexploited Albuquerque, New Mexico setting (instead of New York) is simply an unthinking neutral choice that avoids East, West, and Midwest. This is a tasty puff ball of pink cotton candy. Its brightly-colored fantasy high school is a glossy carnival fairground delight. You savor it, and then perhaps largely forget it, but the memory of being dazzled and entertained for a while remains, a sugar glow that lingers as you walk out of the theater. Like the funny chihuahuas, it's a dose of harmless good cheer sorely needed at a grim and ominous moment. And you know what? A lot of it is really, really well done.

For the TV cast of HSM at East High (typically noncommittal name), gathered together for a full-scale theatrical feature this time, it's senior year--and nobody sees the inside of a classroom. All attention goes to the final school musical show of the class and the big question: will basketball star and great song and dance boy Troy Bolton (Zac Efron), whose father is his coach (Bart Johnson), be separated from both his brainy Stanford-bound girlfriend (and musical co-star) Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Anne Hudgens) and his buddy-since-birth, basketball teammate and male dance partner Chad Danforth (Corbin Bleu)? And will Troy do the 'manly' thing and take a basketball scholarship with Chad in New Mexico, or go to the Big Apple for Julliard, which seems interested too? We must thank writer Peter Barsochini for this impossible choice, this totally uninteresting plot.

But we must sincerely thank HSM guiding spirit Kenny Ortega for his lively direction and infectious choreography, and Zac Efron for his personal charm and suave dancing. Together they are the leaders in making HSM3 irresistible despite its drawbacks. Zac, who besides the High School Musical series (which somewhat inexplicably has spawned more than its share of song hits) was seen in the movie of the musical of John Water's Hairspray, is a sort of Tiger Beat Fred Astaire. Astaire and Gene Kelly were Ortega's original role models, and Ortega’s routines owe something to the old effortless song-and-dance screen tradition. But in their execution of the moves, Efron and Bleu also owe a lot to Michael Jackson—and maybe Prince. Let's not forget Astaire called Jackson to congratulate him after the Motown 25th Anniversary Show—thus a mantle was passed, and the transition isn't as rough as some might think. And the thing is, this movie really is a stage musical brought to glossy hyper-reality--for what they call 'tweens. (The audience was full of young kids at my screening, and they were delighted and most likely in some sense infected with the musical bug for life just by seeing this show.) While we're talking about nods to the tradition, by the way, Busby Berkeley and Bob Fosse are also clearly influences. And to live up to all this, the dancers on view are just uniformly excellent. They and the principals are multi-ethnic and multi-racial, and the message is one of unity and tolerance.

Not that 21-year-old Efron is going to grow up to rival Astaire. He does move deftly, though, evidently enjoying himself. The squealing teen fan-girls are explained by the sparkling ice-blue eyes and broad smile--not to mention the way he moves. Zac is a very pretty young man. Dangerously smooth though: Vanessa Anne has dimples and way better cheekbones. Unfortunately, his bubblegum neutrality is only compounded by the blandness of the proceedings. Whether the singing is good or bad, the songs are not memorable. But some of the production numbers are. And the essence of Troy, his universality for the young audience, is precisely that he's not formed yet; doesn't know who he is.

We can't give away the little surprises that help resolve Troy’s dilemma and keep the bad girl egomaniac Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale) from overwhelming the show as she would like. Her twin brother Ryan (Lucas Grabeel) is the school choreographer and a nifty--almost too nifty--dancer. They, unlike Troy, know what they want (stardom) and they "Want It All": their Broadway fantasy number is one of the movie's two big show-stoppers. Ortega’s lively touch can be seen everywhere in the movie (if only he had a more interesting story to work with). His dances have a wonderful way of morphing the film’s glossy "reality" into a musical number, which then expands into something larger and more imaginary; they create a world of hypnotic make-believe that one can’t help surrendering to. His dances are high-speed. One of the very best is "The Boys Are Back," Troy and Chad’s buddy dance in the auto salvage yard, which has an almost too-short flashback moment of them as eight-year-old bubblegum rockers, dancing their little butts off. Even if the yard's grittiness is synthetic, it's a big change from the hermetic gloss of East High, and the sequence is a feast of glorious, inventive athleticism. But another knack Ortega has is for keeping things going, never lingering too long, and his scene changes are nice and brisk. Likewise the dancing is high speed but not over-caffeinated.

Efron exclaimed during filming how it was sad this was the last shoot on the "East High" set, but actually a TV HSM4 is rumored in the offing. But Zac also said--to explain why he didn't want to tour with the TV cast earlier--that if he had to hear the songs again, he'd want to jump off a very high place. We wouldn't want that. His jumps are very nice, but should be kept safe in case some time in the future he might get a chance to sing and dance in something with the kind of originality and sense of place John Waters' movies have.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.