Review: High School Musical 2 Is Uglier But More Mature
- Feb 10, 2018
- 2 min read
After 2006's High School Musical reached international success, this Disney Channel musical gained an sequel the following year. High School Musical 2 looks (visually) like absolute crap, but the songs were somehow better, the plot was more complex, and the actors actually had some chemistry.
What time is it? It's summertime, and Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) and his friends are looking for a job, when Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale) prompts the manager of the resort she owns to hire him. Unfortunately for her, he also hires the rest of the East High Wildcats, so Sharpay spends the entire movie buttering Troy up to get some valuable time with him and potentially tear him away from his girlfriend Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens).
I don't know what happened to this movie in post-processing, but every daylight scene at the resort is a complete visual disaster. The brown of the rocks and bricks glow orange, and the grass which is literally everywhere is overwhelmingly green. The setting really isn't doing the appearance any favours either.
Of course, no-one's really watching a High School Musical because of what they want to see (although with leads like Efron and Tisdale, no-one would blame them). It's the audio that matters, and it's beautiful. Where the first movie featured 8 songs and a reprise, the second features 11 songs (one is technically a reprise, but really only shares lyrics with the original), and they're all great.
This movie also has more to unpack than the first. Sure, the cliches are set in place - in every movie, Gabriella sings a sad song and leaves Troy, but then they reunite and sing an upbeat song together, and at the end the full cast sings about how happy they are. But in this one, there's no clear-cut villain. Sharpay is actually doing a whole lot to help Troy with his future, which I dare say is a little more important than this high school relationship. The villainous manager is actually just being ordered around by Sharpay. Even Gabriella, who could easily be construed as the bad guy in all these movies, is just trying to spend some time with her boyfriend. Each character has depth and humanity, like a real movie!
High School Musical 2 is by far, the best of the trilogy. It's catchier, deeper, more fun, features new character interactions, and has way more Miley Cyrus cameo. Ashley Tisdale and Lucas Grabeel once again steal the show, and then the songwriters steal the show from them.
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