"High School Musical 2": B Flat

If there's ever been a film that accentuated the gap between today's youngsters and my generation, it's been High School Musical. I caught tons of flack in sixth grade just for liking Grease, yet scores of preteeny boppers today have gone nuts over this tunetastic Disney Channel creation. I still can't fathom how it got popular enough to spawn a line of merchandising that would make the SpongeBob brand look underachieving, but I guess a sequel was a logical step after the first movie racked up some of the biggest ratings in the channel's history. But if anything, High School Musical 2 is a hollow victory for the Disney Channel crew, for while it's not really any worse than its predecessor, it's still a massive pile of pure idiocy on a similar scale.

High School Musical 2 picks up on a most sacred occasion for the students of East High School: the first day of summer break. Young sweethearts Troy (Zac Efron) and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens), as well as all their friends, are in search of a little work to earn some cash over their vacation time. Out of nowhere, Troy lands a job at a ritzy country club, even managing to get Gabriella and pretty much the whole East High gang in there too. What Troy doesn't know, however, is that it's all a ploy by spoiled brat/drama club maven Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) to woo him away from Gabriella and use him to help secure a victory in the club's upcoming talent show. Promises of a bright collegiate future do the trick in causing Troy to stray further and further from his friends, a problem that's going to take a little more than a few song-and-dance numbers to fix.

You have no idea how confused I really am as to why High School Musical and, now, its sequel are the extremely popular, hyped-up events as they are. I've seen a good chunk of the Disney Channel's other homemade movies, which range from the passable (A Ring of Endless Light) to the absolutely abominable (The Cheetah Girls). HSM is along those exact same lines in terms of mediocrity, so why it's become a runaway success is something even God would be puzzled over. All High School Musical 2 does is trade things up for a different flavor of cheese. While the first movie's story was a merciless and charmless Grease ripoff, HSM2 goes for the "fame isn't everything" stand-by, seemingly a favorite plot structure of the Disney Channel after having been done already in such movies of theirs as The Cheetah Girls and Read It and Weep. No attempts are made to change the formula or bring some freshness to the table; director Kenny Ortega and crew are just going through the motions, having picked a ready-made story to film for the umpteenth time so HSM2 could be consumed by its fanbase posthaste.

But what's a little confusing is that the story doesn't really make much sense; the movie's never really sure as to why Sharpay is after Troy in the first place, out of a jealous crush or merely to help her win a talent show. It's this sort of laziness that's inherent throughout the movie and actually comes across as condescending to kids, only none of the movie's fans seem to have picked up on it. As for the soundtrack, the songs are cut from the same cheesy pop-music cloth as in the first HSM, but the numbers seem even cornier here. One only has to look at Troy's solo dance on a golf course near the end of the movie to prove that it's indeed possible to combine every dancing cliche ever into one epic cornball package. As far as the actors go, these kids who should start envisioning futures beyond more High School Musical sequels all fulfill the one-note roles the script forces them into to the best of their abilities: Efron's the poster child for Tiger Beat, Hudgens is brainy but beautiful, Tisdale is the spoiled schemer, and the other cast members follow suit with their respective performances.

Even though I'm not part of High School Musical 2's target audience by a long shot, I like to think I keep in touch with my inner child enough to be able to enjoy something less cerebral and more fluffy. But even so, I must report that just as its predecessor did, High School Musical 2 breaks the cardinal rule of family movies: the whole family has to be able to enjoy it. Kids have already proven to have gone ga-ga over the flick, but parents, on the other hand, might want to grab a couple of those HAZMAT suits before flipping on the tube.

MY RATING: * 1/2 (out of ****)