[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
Sometimes movies can be so underground there isn't even a Wikipedia page for them. While this is often a good thing in terms of us being fully aware that the movie is low quality before we even start watching it, it can become a real problem when your designated plot follower falls asleep in the middle of the movie and then can't relate the plot to you when the rest of the crew inevitably gets distracted and confused. Such is what happened on this night and it will be my struggle to try to recall what was happening in this film with only one anonymously written IMDb summary for assistance. That IMDb summary goes like this, "Jake Baxter takes a job as a repoman with hopes of living the quiet life. Plans go sour when he's whipped into supersonic action, involving a vicious crime lord, a mob of angry car owners, a sadistic porno ring and lastly a brutal, illegal and very lethal car race known throughout L.A.'s underworld as the Slam Track." Let's break that down because it is not nearly as interesting as that summary makes it sound. This dude from Minnesota moves to LA to work as a repo man and somehow thinks this will be a nice, quiet change from his surely fast-paced life in the Midwest. Right. Okay. In his first twenty minutes in the city, he beats up a mugger and throws him through the same glass windows twice. The woman who was mugged helps him find an apartment in her building and they get into a relationship in spite of the fact that he never stays through an entire date with her without running off somewhere for no reason. People get mad at him for repossessing cars, the repo men joke around, there's a porn ring (clarification: they are sadistic and make porn; they do not make sadistic porn) who also dabbles in pimping and drugs, and in the end Jake must win a race because a bunch of evil people have bet on him to win. He throws the race for no explainable reason and just solves the conflicts by beating up the bad guys and throwing a party with his coworkers.I'm not entirely sure if this movie was hard to follow because we were all kind of bored or if it was just so nonsensically written and edited that trying to follow the plot was utterly pointless. At least the unnecessary porn ring scenes gave us some good lines.
Quotes: "Why are they in bikinis?" "It says so in the script." "These girls can't read!" "They're fucking and they're sucking the shit out of each other." BMN Quotes: Jake: "Then my wife got sick." Adam: "So God repoed her." Spoon Rating: 3 Adam's Grandma's Review: "Passable."
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.] So if "High School Musical" is your standard clumsy, clueless, and formulaic Disney Channel Original Movie and "High School Musical 2" is the first movie with the crazy turned all the way up, "High School Musical 3" is what happens when the crazy meter has exploded from Zac Efron's golf course dance and all you have left are references to other musicals and overdoses of meta and earnestness. This movie tried really, really hard to be a real movie. The movie was shown in theaters instead of just on the Disney channel. The budget progressed from 7 million to 11 million but all of that extra money seemed to go into sets and costumes because the overall quality really did not increase. The plot was thin, perhaps even thinner than the previous movies, and while the music seemed to have more instruments, it didn't get any better. As for the choreography, it seemed to get more elaborate and lengthy but I wouldn't call this an improvement so much as a feature. The gang is now in their senior year and are going to put on a musical extravaganza to celebrate. Sharpay has become the antagonist again because she . . . wants to star in the show? Probably. Either way she has an assistant now with the fakest British accent ever who wants to usurp her as the main singer and antagonist. Meanwhile in subplots A and B, Gabriella got into Stanford with early orientation (what?) and Troy is expected to go to the University of Albuquerque like his dad. However, Troy has also had someone apply to Julliard for him and some reps are coming to the show because this movie has no idea how college applications, auditions, or talent works. The movie meanders through existential dread and many music numbers that make pretty blatant references to "A Chorus Line," "Grease," and anything Fosse. There's a scene where Troy drives to the empty school during a thunder storm, which Kay immediately foresaw as the inevitable "Footloose" reference, and he sings and dances his way through his river of emotions. In spite of all high school film conventions, this movie SKIPS prom because it's too busy with music numbers and weird costumes (Adam on one of Ryan's outfits: "What is he wearing? Is he going to go catch butterflies in Germany?"). So little is happening that we formulated a theory that Gabriella is wearing so many empire waist dresses that she's hiding a secret pregnancy and got really into this backstory. They even introduced a throwaway clueless side character who does nothing. After plenty of non-action, there's the final show where we find out that Troy is going to Berkley to be closer to Gabriella and the graduation where Troy gives a speech (why?) where we mentions that they're all in this together. The show ends with an eerie gospal-y cover of "All In This Together" and the background turning into a stage behind the main characters. It was in that moment that we realized something: it was all an act. "High School Musical" is not just an unrealistic portrayl of high school but it is a performance of high school. Nothing was ever meant to resemble reality because it was all part of a show within a show. Even the freeze frame we got near the end ended after a few seconds as if we were in some kind of film-based version of Brechtian epic theater and we were supposed to see the separation and reflect only on the lessons and not all the artiface like the huge sets and the bland pop songs and the thin plot. Someone tried to add depth to "High School Musical" I need to lie down. Quotes: Sharpay: "How can you think about food at a time like this?" Ryan: "It's lunchtime." Sharpay: "I heard Kelsi is writing something amazing for Troy and Gabriella." Ryan: "A song, most likely." Spoon Rating: 5
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.] Keith: “What
are we watching tonight”
Adam: “High
School Musical . . . 2.”
Keith:
“Nooooo! I have to leave. I have things to do.”
In spite of
Keith’s initial reluctance because of his hatred of “High School Musical” last
week, he and the rest of us were all pleasantly surprised to see that “High
School Musical 2” is actually much worse than the first one and much funnier. This movie took everything that was strange about the first movie (the use of musical conventions, the plot, the dancing, the everything) and made it a lot stranger and more unrealistic which ended up making it a lot more tolerable to watch as a bad movie.
The movie
starts in drama class as the clock is ticking down to summer where we have a
huge opening dance number that is this movie’s rip-off of the ending song of
“Grease.” Everything seems harmonious at East High. They’re still apparently
all in this together until it’s clear that Sharpay still has an evil plan to
get Troy and win a stake-less talent show at the country club her parents
own. She is also now a full on Paris Hilton wannabe. She convinces the
management of the club to hire Troy and they end up having to hire everyone
because Troy apparently can’t work without his 20 closest friends. Troy and Gabriella,
in spite of probably having dated since the last movie, still haven’t kissed
and a lot of the movie is a long journey to that moment. The piano girl, who is
weirdly invested in their relationship or possibly in being their third, writes
them a song that they could sing in the talent show but Troy still insists that
he can’t sing in spite of presumably staring in the school musical somewhere in that span of time in between movies. Sharpie
doesn’t like any of this so she alienates her brother and creates ways to spend
more time with Troy like having him caddy for her father while they play golf
(Adam: “Couldn’t they have been playing a whiter sport like squash”). She gets
him promoted and has Daddy introduce him to a bunch of college basketball
players and all this preferential treatment turns Troy into a jerk who doesn’t
show up to dates or staff events. He has a few heart-to-hearts with his dad
where a basketball is always comically present. At one point Troy says he doesn't know who he is anymore and his dad hands him a picture of
himself in uniform that he just had in his room. While Troy is rehearsing talent show stuff with
Shurple and her taffeta-crapping skirt, Ryan is hanging with the plebeians and
having so much sexual tension with Chad that they changed clothes in between
scenes (presumably after sexing). After having a Michael Jackson dance outburst
on a golf course, Troy comes back to who he was and romantic music plays while
he apologizes to Chad even though Chad is dating Ryan. Gabriella, who had left
the club in disgust with Troy, comes back during the talent show and everyone
is in this together again. Until the next movie, I’d bet.
This movie
was nuts. It’s hard to believe that this movie probably had a much larger
budget than the first one because of the surprise success of the first. The
music was probably a bit less generic than the music in the first but in all
the wrong ways. The kiss plot was comical considering they’re in high school.
Everyone’s reluctance to admit they can dance and sing in spite of constantly
dancing and singing feels like some kind of surrealist performance art. But
overall, this movie really succeeds in how the campiness has been turned up to
eleven with no apologies given. You do you, HSM!
Quotes:
Sharpay:
“Ugh, Ryan, speak to mother!”
Ryan: “Hi,
Mommy!”
Sharpay:
*looks at lone drummer in an empty room* “Give me a beat!” *struts out*
BMN Commentary:
Troy:
“Listen.” *coyotes howling*
Adam:
“Coyotes. They’ll eat our flesh.”
Fulton: (to
Troy) “It would seem the Evans family thinks you have untapped potential.”
Adam: “And
they wanna tap that.”
Keith: He has a picture of himself in his room.
Adam: He and Sharpay have more in common than we thought.
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
I'm sure there are many who would immediately object to the idea that "High School Musical" was watched at Bad Movie Night but it is also clear that there are a lot of people who see this movie through such strong nostalgia goggles that they somehow missed that it's awful. Disney Channel Original movies have never been the pinnacle of quality (except "Brink"; do not diss "Brink" around us) but there's something especially terrible about this movie. From the loose "Romeo & Juliet" premise, to the cheesy, generic pop songs, to the conflicts that go nowhere, this movie was made in a factory and it was only by a bizarre wave of popularity that it spawned two sequels, which we will also be watching. The plot revolves around Troy and Gabriella, two teens who meet at a ski resort over Christmas break and are forced into singing karaoke only to find that they both like singing and each other. When break ends, it turns out that Gabriella has moved to Troy's school by random chance but they can't be friends because they live in a dystopia teen novel where everyone can only have one interest but drugs, sex, and violence do not exist. In spite of Troy loving basketball and Gabriella loving science, they end up lowkey trying out for the school musical (with a song so bland we had to pause the movie to make sure it wasn't the song from the karaoke scene) and get listed among the callbacks, causing the school to go into turmoil. Sharpey and Ryan, twins who stars in all the school's productions, are out to destroy them . . . somehow, and the other students all start confessing that they (*gasp*) like more than one thing. A really strange dance and song situation occurs where they sing about "sticking to the status quo" because I guess the school's secret police will arrest them otherwise for unspecified crimes against The Institutation. Competing for the antagonist roles are Troy and Gabriella's best friends who at exactly two-thirds of the way through this exactly one hour and thirty minute movie, try to tear them apart. Things are resolved quickly after Gabriella sings this movie's "Hopelessly Devoted to You." But, oh no, the twins get the basketball championship, scholastic decatholan, and musical auditions moved to the same day to try to sabotage Troy and Gabriella! It doesn't work. They sing and everyone loves them and then the twins have a complete 180 and support them. They all change into school colors and do a silly dance number about how "they're all in this together." I suffer. Next week will be "High School Musical 2" where I have a feeling they will no longer all be in this together for the sake of contrived conflict (and because they didn't realize there was going to be a sequel when they made the first one). Spoon Rating: 5
