If you don’t know who Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez are, then you obviously don’t have chiildren in Elementary through High school. They are the star-crossed sweethearts of the Disney Channel’s HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL, the most popular movie on the Disney channel ever, and a movie my daughter and her friends must have watched on TV and DVD ten hundred million thousand times, not counting today when they’ll probably watch it another twenty hundred thousand times. Meaning that my Wife and I have probably had this movie or the soundtrack playing through the background of our regular parental chores at least that many times. And I have to say, even after all that exposure, that’s it’s actually a pretty good movie! Why?

• It’s a good story. Troy is a star basketball player, Gabriella is a star science student, but what they both want to do is sing sing sing! The supporting characters are very funny, especially the Drama teacher Ms. Darbus and Sharpey’s brother Ryan.
• The music is undeniably catchy and well written. And, most interestingly for me, the signature song “What I’ve Been Looking For”, is presented in two drastically different versions — the poppy, show-tuney version by Sharpey and her brother, and the soulful, pretty way by Troy and Gabriella. And it’s my hope that the kids who watch this will learn a litle bit about songs and arrangements and dynamics (that is, when they’re not swooning and dancing…)
• And speaking of dancing — the TV show goes out of its way to present excerpts so kids can actually learn the dance moves in the movie, which is just great, because a) it’s fun to watch your kids learn dance moves, b) it’s good exercise, and c) see Item A.
Lastly, of course, is that’s it’s a “safe” kids movie about high school – there are no guns, drugs, hooking up, etc. If you want that, go see STRANGERS WITH CANDY, or HARD CANDY, or The Ramones in ROCK AND ROCK HIGH SCHOOL (which I’ll show my daughter when she gets a little older…)

Now I’m sure there’s some people who will read this and want to talk about the commercialization of children’s television, the shallowness of contemporary culture, why aren’t kids watching THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, etc. And to them I say – Troy and Gabriella! 4-Ever!

This entry was posted on Friday, June 30th, 2006 at 10:00 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.