High School Musical 3: Extended Edition

Rather than the easily mocked, ineptly made, Xanadu-like crap that this popular Disney franchise appeared to be in the commercials, High School Musical 3 actually proves to be an enraging and contemptible example of soulless assimilation where every child is brought up to value the same bigoted Judeo-Christian ethics and superficial trash. The kids of East High wander around with the same designer clothing, the same goals, the same desire to be liked by equally empty robots and the same inability to conceptualize anything that falls outside their narrow worldview. Frankly, the youth of our nation would be better off watching gratuitous French horror, given how likely HSM3 is to cause teen suicide and eating disorders. None of these unseemly realities exist in East High, however, as everything is clean and sanitized, along with the kids who all seem to spend thousands of dollars on designer clothing from the same store. There are no variant cliques or outsiders to destroy their hyper-realized colour palette and simplistic glee. If this surreal, Pat Robertson-approved world wasn't bad enough, the music in HSM 3 also proves to be that passionless, canned, American Idol crap that laughs in the face of musical nuance with bland, synthetic repetition. But, hey, at least there is an inadvertently homoerotic dance sequence in a junkyard where vagrants provide backup choreography for Ms. Efron. The flimsy plot essentially examines the anxieties that Troy (Zak Efron), Gabriella (Vanessa), Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale), Chad (Corbin Bleu), Taylor (Monique Coleman) and Lucas (Ryan Evans) feel as prom and graduation approach. Of course, they all cope with these anxieties through song and dance. The two-disc DVD set includes a digital copy of the movie for portable devices, along with a sing-along, deleted scenes and a variety of featurettes on the prom and graduation where the cast discuss how difficult it is to say goodbye. Also included are bloopers, which is strange, as the entire movie feels like a giant one.