Our story, a mixture of Grease and Romeo & Juliet, follows a burgeoning romance between high schoolers Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) and Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens). They couldn't be more of opposites since Troy is a basketball star and Gabriella, who just moved into town, was previously seen as just the intellectual bookworm. But both of them are united in their love for singing and, after initially expressing great reluctance at such an idea, decide to try out for the school musical. They manage to impress with their audition and score a callback, but these two breaking out of the tight social norms of High School is generating a lot of controversy, most of all with popular girl Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale), who doesn't like the idea of these two scoring the lead roles of a school play since she always get such high-profile roles in the school's theatrical productions.
If you're expecting the story and characters of High School Musical to be broad and devoid of depth, while, you're gonna get what you expect. Troy's initial confusion at being torn between basketball and being in the theater program plays like you'd expect, complete with a father figure who urges him to put basketball before everything else, while Sharpay is the same kind of stereotypical popular girl that always emerges in these High School comedies and the supporting cast is mostly made up of similar types of characters who crop up in this subgenre. All of this is very much true...but High School Musical has a secret weapon up its sleeve in the form of embracing its predictable nature.
Where High School Musical goes very much right is in fully embracing the cheese factor ingrained into its premise. The dialogue (penned by Peter Barsocchini, for instance, doesn't just have Troy's best buddy Chad (Corbin Bleu) query what is going on with Troy and his new girlfriend, no, he asks Troy what "that high-IQ temptress has done to you". That's the kind of lively gobbledygook that High School Musical frequently uses as dialogue and it's frequently delightful. A key moment in the main romance involves a greenhouse that's supposed to be a secret even though it's clearly on the rooftop of a public school. Straight-faced tomfoolery that clutches all the silliness its story offers up and then some really does make High School Musical a recurring hoot.
The young actors also seem to be having a ball in a movie that embraces cheese so heavily it may as well be a dairy plantation. Zac Efron, who doesn't get to do the majority of his singing here, leads the group in a baby-faced form that feels like the Pichu form to his modern-day Pikachu form while Lucas Grabeel steals the entire show as Sharpay's twin brother Ryan Evans. Grabeel is so thoroughly heightened in his performance in a way that feels surprisingly accurate to how High School theater kids are (I was one of those kids, I speak from experience!) that it ends up making an already humorous performance all the more enjoyable, he's a total delight here.
And then there's the music, the aspect of High School Musical that really took it to the next level of popularity. Nothing here even begins to approach the sort of musical numbers penned by the likes of Stephen Sondheim or Lin-Manuel Miranda, but they're a fun bunch of tunes, especially Troy and Gabriella's big climactic duet Breaking Free is especially well-done thanks to the over-the-top touches Efron and Hudgens bring to their on-screen performance of the song (Hudgens ditching her jacket off-screen after singing her first few lines of the song had me laughing out loud). All of that enjoyable fun plus a surprisingly thoughtful message imparted to a young audience on the importance of embracing your own identity instead of having traditional gender roles or societal expectations define it for you? So that's why High School Musical became such a big deal for my generation!
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