Genre: Musical
Director: Kenny Ortega
Starring: Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel, Corbin Bleu, Monique Coleman
Rifftrax Year: 2010
Riffers: Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett
The Movie
I've never looked that deeply into the late-2000's fad of High School Musical. It was way after my time as a Disney Channel watcher. Researching for this blog post is probably the most I've deep dived into it. One thing that I was moderately surprised to learn is that the director of the films, Kenny Ortega, has some cult film cred. This guy directed the box office disaster turned well liked musical Newsies and the beloved mainstream witchcraft comedy Hocus Pocus. Neither of these movies set the theater chains on fire initially, so it should come as no surprise that it would set his career back a while. What a place for him to pop up again than making a TV sitcom stylized musical for the Disney Channel!
This film tells the story of two teenagers named Troy and Gabriella who are in that phase of totally into each other but look away and giggle whenever they look each other in the eye and each recently discover they have a passion and talent for singing. They struggle with the idea of trying out for the school's musical production, but Troy is the school's star basketball player and can't take time away from his team while Gabriella fears the musical might distract from her studies. Eventually both find the courage to jump right in and impress the drama teacher with their lungs. But they find rivals for their position in the twin siblings Sharpay and Ryan, who once ruled the school's stage productions with an iron fist and aren't about to be topped.
I'd be lying if I said High School Musical is an impressive feat in filmmaking, that being said I didn't hate it as much as I thought I probably would. The movie has more effort put into it than it probably gets credit for and there is some solid choreography, if not groundbreaking on any level (I'm watching this the same year as the film version of In the Heights was released, which completely spanks this movie in choreography). The big issue is that High School Musical walks and talks like a sitcom, and not a real sitcom, one of those youth-aimed ones on Nickelodeon. The presentation is very sterile and nobody feels like a real character outside of their devised personality tropes/traits. They're serviceable for the movie's simplistic needs, but there is no desire to break free from just being cute and pleasant.
The music itself is probably the big issue, as most numbers sound exactly the same with different words. And even when those words are switched up, they're usually something mundane like "Together, together, together, together everyone! Together, together, together, c'mon let's have some fun!" Other numbers drive home trite plot devices of other simplistic high school movies, such as not separating from the status quo and striving to be popular. The tunes are catchy for the youth, but they're forgettable and bland. The performers are at least talented enough, so much so that even fifteen years later we still see some of them around. Zac Efron certainly broke free into some mainstream appeal. Vanessa Hudgens...well she gave it her best shot, but despite looking like a starlet-in-training she never quite delivered a career that it probably seems like she could have had. She still pops up from time to time though.
My big takeaway from High School Musical is "I get it." I understand why kids liked this. Do they still? I don't know. Is High School Musical still a thing? Probably. It's not entirely undeserved and the movie has just enough charisma for me to not vomit in my mouth. I won't be jumping on that bandwagon though and it's not something I'd watch of my own accord.
The Trax
High School Musical is a bit of an experiment for the Rifftrax crew. The movie is targeted at tween girls and let's just say that the average Rifftrax fan is not a tween girl. But Twilight wound up being a huge seller for them so this popular-with-its-demographic-but-widely-mocked-outside-of-it film is given a crack to see if it can be just as big. I think the Twilight riff hit in the heat of Twilight backlash and it was what a lot of people needed at the exact moment that it came out. By the time High School Musical's riff came out, the High School Musical fad had already came and went (and even if it hadn't, I don't think High School Musical resulted in a quarter of the bored boyfriends that Twilight did), and I don't think a large portion of Rifftrax's fanbase was going to be caught dead buying/renting a Disney Channel DVD, so I suspect it didn't pay off. At any rate, they never riffed any of the sequels.
It's too bad too, because this is fucking hilarious.
Cards fully on the table, this is not as good a riff as Twilight. If High School Musical has one thing going against it then it would be that the movie is very one-note. Every scene feels and plays exactly like the scene before it and what little plot it has is recycled from a generic plotline grab bag that a lot of TV movies aimed at children mine. Because of this, the samey nature of the movie bogs the experience down and when the laughs aren't hitting the high notes, it feels longer than it is.
That is practically the only bad thing I can say about this riff (other than a few off-color uses of the word "retard" that haven't aged well), because if you take this movie head-on you will find that Mike, Kevin, and Bill have solid material to throw at it. High School Musical looks and tastes like bubblegum and they're ready to chew it up and spit it out. There is a certain jovial nature to the film that is hard to fight against so they don't even try. They keep the jovial nature to their riff, but they bring it down to their level. They take the lyrics and beat of the music and make it dirtier, not exactly in a raunchy, blue comedy way, but more in a manner that is less squeaky clean than what the film wants to present. There is a musical number early on about students repressing their passion and individuality to fit in with the status quo, while Mike, Kevin, and Bill enhance it as each individual student who comes clean is rejected by the rest of the student body in extremist ways. A lot of the musical sequences like this really shine, as it calls back to numbers like Kisskicker 99 from MST's Hobgoblins, where the boys can just layer their own lyrics on top of the beat and it turns something mundane into something fresh and funny. And then there are commentaries on the nature of the songs themselves, such as a duet by brother and sister duo Sharpay and Ryan perform for the drama teacher so they will be cast in the school musical, of which they refer to each other as if they're lovers. This bit of an incestuous slip does not go by unnoticed.
The movie's rather trite sense of humor is layered on top of as well, as sometimes a broad sitcom punchline is given something zingier to top it off by the trio. There is a very weird static line about pink jelly as a scene transitions, causing Kevin to stop and observe "The fake dialogue is far more interesting than the actual film." They also comment on the non-reality that this school takes place in, noting that very little actual schoolwork seems to be taking place. "So school is evidentially a place where you go to practice your extracurricular activities?" They also go a bit blue with the drama teacher, who they have a few saucy riffs for this obnoxious and obviously non-sexual character. A lot of this stuff hits a bullseye.
Probably the big question anybody reading this will be asking themselves is "Yeah, but why would I want to sit through High School Musical?" I mean, I get that and I don't know what to tell ya'. Sometimes a flat out rejection of the film featured can make one just not wish to subject themselves to the riffing experience. This is the inherent flaw to Rifftrax's downloadable commentary model and it's really no wonder why they tend to target movies their demographic might actually own instead of taking chances on movies that would set up far superior material for them, and instead we get ho-hum riffs to movies that actually might be more enjoyable than the Rifftrax. Is it any wonder they started buying crappy movies and putting out VODs? I mean, if you're getting the movie with the commentary, that's more enticing. High School Musical though is a glimpse at the promise of Rifftrax's original business model being fulfilled, as it's a goofy movie that they can't afford for their premise that still sets up great comedy. It's too bad nobody seems to want to go out of their way to actually put the movie on to get that experience. But hopefully my recommendation gets a few more eyes on this one, because it deserves a look.
Good
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