(Or, three trilogies and one underrated duology.)
Here comes a co-authored (and absurdly lengthy) post, y’all.
I personally was a huge snob about High School Musical as an actual high-schooler, and I’ll admit that. I was in my peak Broadway phase and I thought it was lazy and dumb and, y’know, gave people a bad notion of what musicals actually were like. I only watched it once, and avoided the sequels like the plague. Drift partner had enjoyed it, though. Unrelated to this, first she and then we watched Teen Beach Movie, another Disney Channel original musical, and found it absolutely delightful. I will go to bat for Teen Beach and its sequel all day long. She eventually showed me High School Musical removed from my jaded high school lens and I was able to genuinely enjoy it for what it was, and likewise the second film. They’re not high art, but they’re fun. We also, as I’ve mentioned, rabbitholed into the Descendants franchise, which maybe isn’t the classiest thing for two adult women to admit but this is a shame-free zone.
Last weekend we saw High School Musical 3 on Disney+ and said “what the hell.” She’d only seen it once, a long time ago, and didn’t remember it; I’d never seen it and figured I might as well. We expected the experience to be middling, ultimately forgettable, but not insulting.
It took us like three hours to watch this one hour/twenty-two minute movie because we kept pausing to rant, which is why we’re writing this. It’s kind of about High School Musical 3 but it’s also kind of about the relative merits of Disney franchises and how the hell you make sequels to things, especially musicals.
(And Pirates. Drift partner is a former Pirates fangirl, so this entered our discussion as well. We’re only discussing the first three Pirates films, because the other ones are irrelevant.)
Full story here.