High School Musical 2

So... this happened...

High School Musical 2 is the Disney Channel Original movie sequel to the widely popular original High School Musical. The continuation of the students at East Side High and their WACKY adventures being in High school all while dancing and singing.

But this time, its summer vacation and Troy Bolton (played by Zac Efron), Gabriella Montez (played by Vanessa Hudgens) are in a beautiful relationship... where they haven't kissed yet. They're friends Chad (played by Corbin Bleu) Taylor (played by Monique Coleman) and them all want to get a summer job as school gets out. Meanwhile Sharpay (played by Ashley Tisdale) and Ryan (played by Lucas Grabeel)are heading to their country club.

Well for some reason Sharpay really wants to get it in with Troy.

For some reason the ultimate revenger on Troy and Gabriella for stealing their High School Musical is to get with Troy... Does it make a lick of sense? No. Does it make for some I guess interesting conflict for the characters to deal with? well? sorta.

You see Sharpay wants to get get closer to Troy so she wants the country club to hire him, but he's able to get all his friends hired at the country club including Gabriella.

On Sharpay's orders, their employer tries to make Troy's job great and everyone else's really difficult. Troy is getting special treatment, looks at for schools and scholarships, and gets paid more.

Now the biggest problem I had with this movie right off the bat was how surprised these kids were when the boss was going through what they should do for their jobs. You'd think if he was trying to get them to quit, he'd say, you will do all this shit perfectly and he'd make their job overly difficult... but no, he just explains what their jobs will be. In fact its just the jobs they expected to do so I'm not totally sure why these kids are freaking out when the guy is explaining work. Yeah he's particular about when they clock in and when they take breaks but so are a lot of bosses. I'm not sure what its saying to kids watching this if they think that it's such a challenge for them to do... a job...

But that's not going to get the gang down. You know... cause they're all in this together!

 That again is a big thing in this film as the message is we're all a team. And dear god, its like all these teenagers are on uppers because everyone, and I mean EVERYONE is smiling in every single scene.

I don't mean to say they shouldn't smile, it is a Disney movie, but holy shit! There's a scene where these two characters come in mid song and they're so animated and fake that it reminds me of an actual high school musical. Which I guess if that's what they're going for that's fine, but you've got enough animation in the songs, give us some actual dialogue, something people would actually say and make these characters a little bit less one dimensional.

That's another thing, all those characters in the first movie that sang the song about getting away from the Status quo, well in them all growing apart from what is expected of them, they converged back into the same god damn character.

Like remember Kelsi?

Sure she wasn't the most interesting character but she was kind of your quiet composer behind the scenes. But nope, a magical song at the end of the first film drained out any character from that and now I can't tell the difference between her and any other female character in this movie.

Same with the guys. Like I get the message of the first film was that you don't have to conform to the group you're designated to, Stoners... I mean Skaters can play the chello, Nerds can like hip hop, a basket ball player can sing. But at no point did they ever say Troy wasn't a basketball player anymore. He still liked to play Basketball he just liked to sing too.

So why did Kelsi change? And you may say, Well Connor, she in fact did not change, See she has that hipster looking hat. That means she is quirky and different. To that I say, You're wrong. Go home!

So yeah, everyone is a team and they're basically teaming up against Sharpay, at least until the end where Sharpay suddenly realizes that they're all in this together and suddenly has a change of heart... the same way she did in the first film! Now, why they would forgive her being a royal bitch to everyone? I don't know. But its High School Musical. I need to stop asking intelligence questions.

I mean its probably the reason he's the only one with a career now, but Zac Efron is again the center of the film as he gets caught up in all the perks Sharpay and her father is giving him. He of course loses sight of who he is and his friends notice it.

I have to give the guy some credit, he's an okay actor. He's a lot more confident in this film and while he's still Disney animated, I can relate to his character. Could a lot of his problems be fixed by just having a conversation with his friends as opposed to listening to his frat boy dad like he did in the first movie? Well yeah, but hey, Dad's are stupid right?

The worst part about this whole situation is that a lot of it is brought on by Sharpay giving him special treatment. She brings him to light to her father who has connections at a prestigious university (I don't know how prestigious New Mexico University is, but I'll bite for now) and wants to help Troy get on the Basketball team and get scholarships. Troy obviously being nervous about college goes along with the perks and is nice to Sharpay.

The problem I have with it is, at no point does Sharpay's father say, "Listen boy, you had better well fuck my daughter or I will pull all support towards college for you." As far as we know, her father just likes Troy and there's nothing to say he's giving special treatment, a lot of the special treatment he gets comes from him being charming and being good at sports. So to a certain point, I don't quite get a lot of the grief his friends give him. He's getting opportunities, his friends should be happy for him and not get butt hurt when he doesn't join them for lunch. Does Troy become a little bit of a jerk? Yes, but that's really only in convenience with the plot and teach the lesson of not losing yourself... I guess.

The songs of the film are once again your generic Disney crap.

I feel like the first movie's songs are much more iconic and will probably last a little bit longer than the songs in this movie. But that doesn't mean that they're not performed well. Everyone in the cast I guess has a good voice. I don't know how much of it they're actually singing or how much of it is autotuned but if I think too much harder into this film my brain is going to hurt and you all should definitely give me a lot of shit for this review.

Oh another thing that is really funny watching this as a 22 year old college student is seeing all the sexual tension in this cast. I know Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens were dating at the time of this movie. I don't know if they had had sex yet but damn it looked like they needed to. Every scene had sexual tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. Which wouldn't be that weird, if the two had ever kissed before. The big deal of this movie was that this was the first time Troy and Gabriella had ever kissed. But damn it looked like they were ready to do so much more. Summer Lovin to the extreme.

And what's more is, it showed in the rest of the cast two. Sharpay just looked like she wanted to get into Troy's pants. Ryan and Sharpay continue to have that weird chemistry even though they're suppose to be brother and sister. Even Ryan and Chad had a moment where I was convinced they were going behind the dugout after the baseball game for some extra innings. I know its a Disney Channel Original movie and everything here is innocent and sweet but I can only imagine that had to be a problem off camera.

Overall, High School Musical 2 is what you expect of a sequel to High School Musical. If you didn't like the first one, I'm not totally sure why you watched the second one. If you're like me and have a girlfriend that is making you see it, well it doesn't really matter what I say, she probably loves it. I'll just be the one to say, its not my type of movie. I'm not gonna rave about High School Musical 2 because I don't like Disney Channel Original movies. But I'm not gonna say the movie was awful. The characters were pretty wooden and Disney generic but if anything its a fun movie to poke holes in and hopefully you only have to watch it once.

There's a very good chance I will have to watch High School Musical 3... I don't know when, but it will happen eventually.

But that's what I thought of High School Musical 2. What did you think? Why do you like the High School Musical movies? Comment and Discuss below! Or shoot me a tweet @cmhaugen24 and follow me on Twitter to get updates on movie news and reviews.

I'll leave you with this. The great thing that came out of this movie was the song Bet on it. Not because the song is good, but the fact Zac Efron does an incredibly obnoxious dance number while singing this song that goes with any song, including The Sound of Music. Enjoy!