You all may have been scrambling to find a barbecue or a beach to entertain you last night, but our plans had been set in stone for months. 8:00 found us lined up in front of the TV with a hearty supply of blueberries and pretzels, and finally it began, the media event we had certainly been waiting for (E, last week: Can we buy the DVD? Me: Let's wait and see if we like it.): High School Musical 2.
And it was, in a word...tedious.
Zac Efron was boring when he went bad, even more boring when he turned good again, and totally ridiculous singing righteously in black.
Gabriella was totally neutered: no longer smart girl, just good girlfriend.
They tried to heterosexualize Ryan by making him a Little League World Series baseball player, but luckily it didn't really take.
And though Sharpay still rules, she is now ickily reminiscent of Paris. (M, midway through: I want more Sharpay.) But they made her good in the end too, with absolutely zero narrative logic (and seemingly forgetting the fact that she got good at the end of the first movie too...).
The Busby Berkeley Sharpay-and-her-friends-being-fabulous-in-the-pool musical number ruled, and the gang-rocking-out-in-the-kitchen one was pretty good, but even the music got tedious.
And the plot? Nonexistent when it wasn't predictable.
You might ask: what do you expect? But really, High School Musical was...OK, forget about me, I just checked my original High School Musical post, and looks like I wasn't so crazy about that one either. I guess it just grew on me after I'd seen it forty million thousand times! So let's just say this one is worse, and nowhere near as twisted, which helps make it worse, and we'll leave it at that.
Oh, and if you really must see a summer resort song-and-dance movie right now, go for Dirty Dancing. In fact, I think I might need to see Dirty Dancing as an antidote.
Then again...
M: It was good.
M's friend L: It was good.
E: It was awesome.
So what do I know?
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2 comments:
Noah has a sleepover planned for tomorrow night to watch it. (We TIVO'd it.) But I thought the first one pretty much sucked (I'm holding out for Hairspray!!! You should take the girls to that! We're taking my mom soon and it's making me crazy that we haven't seen it yet.)
Better message than Grease and better music than all of 'em. (In fact, it's pretty much the same message as HSM the first.)
Last winter when I was subbing, my students had to do presentations on the Bible, and five of them managed to work in HSM songs.
I'm teaching 9th again this fall-- should I watch HSM2? Probably.
And as a proud Baltimorean, I'm still miffed that the newest "Hairspray" was not actually shot in Baltimore!
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