High School Musical 3 - Real, live fangirls!

[Warning: I’m going to give away the ending.]

This afternoon I took my little brother (long story) to see the third High School Musical movie. I wasn’t that keen to see it but figured that, like Harry Potter and Twilight, the fuss would be interesting even if the movie itself didn’t float my boat. I find these kinds of mass phenomena really interesting—what is it about these things that captivates millions of, in the case of HSM, tweenage girls? I’d say there were less than 30 people in the theatre and almost all of them were 12ish year-old girls. I had my answer in the first few seconds. The opening shot was a close-up of a sweaty Zac Efron’s face and, I kid you not, a bunch of the girls in the theatre cheered and one called out something involving the word “sexy.” There was an audible response every time he took his shirt off. It was marvellous. Obviously there was more to it than that—these girls were also clapping along to some of the songs and laughing at the jokes, but I was entertained more by seeing fangirls in action than anything else.

What I could have done without were the girls who kept getting up and moving to seats right at the front…then running back again to get their friends…then running back again to get jerseys or something… Bah!

The music was mostly forgettable, IMO (especially when compared to Grease), but I genuinely did enjoy the movie. I wanted to know how poor Troy was going to reconcile all his different ambitions. That was the main point of the story—would he choose to do basketball or theatre at college? Would he and Gabriella end up at colleges thousands of miles apart or would they compromise on their dreams to be together? Of course he got it all in the end, which at first I thought was a bit of a cop-out. Now I’m thinking that since (a) they didn’t have to stretch credibility to pull it off and (b) the message that you don’t have to be exclusively ‘the basketball guy’ or whatever is a good one (better than that of Grease), maybe it was just the cheesiness of it all that made it seem too good to be true.

The only time the feel-goodness of the movie sagged for me was when I started comparing it to the reality of high school and life thereafter, but that soon passed and I was in a great mood afterward. I'm really looking forward to seeing Twilight now.

A question for you: Troy Bolton/Zac Efron, Edward Cullen/Robert Pattinson, Mr Darcy/Colin Firth… What is the common denominator?

May today be better than yesterday, but not as good as tomorrow.