I came to school this morning and do you know what I saw… delinquents. Do you know what I didn't see? Dancing delinquents. On January 20th, 2006,millions of hormone driven boys and girls tuned into Disney Channel to watch the overly hyped release of its newest creation which immediately swept the nation and the rest of the globe soon after. With a combination of musical numbers and choreographed dances the film depicted a typical Hollywood style high school; guy meets girl, guy falls for girl, guy gets girl. Throw in some drama and misunderstanding to give it a twist and TA-DA! You've got “High School Musical.” In this film the main characters start out in eleventh grade, which gave Disney the opportunity to create more movies that take place during the students' high school experience; and they did. Troy and Gabriella's summer turned into a country club adventure as the East High School gang got jobs together, causing contention and jealousy to ensue in the 2007 release of “High School Musical 2”. It seems, however, that Disney cannot turn down the change to turn a sequel into a trilogy. Summer ends for the wildcats and senior year advances upon them. The much-dreaded decision of choosing a college is at hand and the students are faced with separation as they all depart to different schools. As a whole, the “High School Musical” trilogy depicts a high school scene that is completely unrealistic. I think Disney shouldn't make a “High School Musical 4” because people can only take so much fake high school drama put into song.
Walt Disney's first full length film was released in 1973; “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” It immediately became a classic and Disney turned into one of the greatest movie producers of all time. With over 750, movies Disney includes a bit of magic and adventure in each one. Over the last ten years, however, I believe that the great name of Disney has been trampled upon. Movies like “the Cheetah Girls” and “Air Bud” have corny plots and are constantly made fun of. Now they are taking a movie and throwing in school and snobby teenagers; two things of which no one really wants any more.
In reality, high school is nothing like what it's portrayed as in “High School Musical.” The students at my school don't break into choreographed dances at random, and if an athlete needs to “get their head in the game”, they don't start singing about it during halftime. The fact that Gabriella and Troy have a song that they sing to each other while breaking up is ridiculous; no couple sings to each other about breaking up, while breaking up. “High School Musical” has been said to be one of the most critiqued Disney movie. This is because most Americans have gone through the high school experience and know what really goes on there. You can't just add things into a movie to make it more interesting if everyone knows that that those things don't happen in real life. That's like making a movie about a grocery store that has caves and wizards in it; we've all been to a grocery store and know those things aren't there. If Disney was going to make a movie about high school, they should have tried a little harder to make it realistic.
There are some people who happen to be huge fans of “High School Musical” and all that has come from it. To me, these are the people who hope that one day high school might be like it is on the screen. They hope that in the end we all just might go home with absoloutly no homework. The people who don't like these movies seem to be the ones who are more accepting of how things turn out when everything doesn't happen the way we necessarily want. Even if Disney goes through with making a fourth “High School Musical,” no one can tell how long the franchise will last. There are only so many dramatic high school events that you can make movies about before you run out of material.
When a movie is made, if it is good, it's held to a certain standard. Every time we watch that same movie we expect the roles or voices of the characters to be played by the same person. Then if the movie has a sequel we hope that the producers were smart enough to get the same people to play the role they had in the first movie. If the role is played by a different person our standards aren't met and we find ourselves disappointed. Take the movie “George of the Jungle” for instance. Brendan Fraser was cast for the role of George and Leslie Mann for Ursula. Then in the sequel, both of those characters had new people playing the part and the movie turned out to be a disaster. In “High School Musical 4” the producers want to start off fresh with a new batch of students leaving all of the last movie's characters in college. At this rate “High School Musical” is going to turn into a never- ending series like “Air Bud” or “the Land Before Time.”
All in all, the “High School Musical” films are, for lack of a better word, phoney. The continued decrease in creativity of songs and acting since the first film leads me to believe that the fourth movie will only get worse. Not to mention casting new students will create mobs of upset girls who only liked the movies because of georgous Zach Efron. “High School Musical” is poison oak on the leg of society; it spreads fast and is an extreme nuisance, but hopefully if left alone it will go away. If I had to go through every single day of my life singing songs about every little thing that I did, I don't think I could handle it. Could you?