Review of High School Musical 2 (2007) by Adrian B — 13 Apr 2013

Wow. The tagline for this movie is: "Are you ready for the start of something new?" Well, I was. . . But this isn't new. I've seen this before. About 10,000 times before. And all those 10,000 other movies were better than this piece of poo.

Let me start off by saying that there are only three actors in here who have any chance of making it passed Disney Channel: Zac Efron (who does blandly here, but I've seen what he could do in Hairspray and he's hot, so I say keep him), Ashley Tisdale (who sticks to an old cliche, but puts her soul into it and comes out pretty good), and Lucas Grabeel.

The last person I mentioned is the only person who gives a good performance. Lucas, as Ryan, plays up the gayness just enough, plays up the bitchiness just enough, plays up the theatre freak personality just enough, and doesn't go overboard with the character.

In fact, he pulls the cliche shell off of him and actually makes Ryan a three dimensional character and I hope he makes time for bigger and better things than Disney Channel for his future. That said, this movie sucks.

It's unoriginal, sappy, shitty, and I don't like the songs either. Corbin Bleu does a terrifically horrid job, as does Vanessa Anne Hudgens. Both of them play their parts as if they were 5 year olds in a really bad school play.

There's nothing natural about them. The story is boring, but I will say that I liked a few things in this film: The golf scene with the Evans family was actually a really good scene. It kept my attention through the whole scene and I laughed quite a lot.

And the baseball number, which shows quite a lot of sexual tension between Ryan and Chad, was very clever and creative in its choreography. It was just out of place. And I enjoyed the subtle notion that Ryan and Chad are couple.

But, other than that, don't waste your time on a movie that should never have been made.