High School Musical 2 Hits Too Many Sour Notes To Live Up To It's Potential

It was always gonna be difficult to pull off a High School Musical sequel. The whole point of the first movie was that it embraced corny storytelling so heavily that it might as well have swept up that type of storytelling in a big old bear hug. Adhering to this sort of storytelling means you've wrapped up all the characters stories in tidy little bows at the end so that the viewer believes they go on to live happily ever after. How exactly do you create further adventures for Troy Bolton and his fellow wildcats then, especially when you have further issues like trying to create a premise that still feels like it's a High School Musical production without just coming off as a weak retread of its predecessor?


Such a surprisingly daunting creative challenge has, alas, not been conquered here, High School Musical 2 is a notably inferior project to the first film in a large number of ways. Notably, the first movies quasi-Romeo & Juliet story has been traded out for a summertime-set tale of Troy (Zac Efron), Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) and their friends getting hired to work at a local country club that Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) works at, with Sharpay hoping to get Troy's adoration by making him a premium member of the country club. Getting to live the rich lifestyle while all his friends are stuck being kitchen workers causes rifts in his various friendships and one can see where the storyline will go from here already I imagine.

This is a premise that just doesn't offer up as many chances for goofy fun as the first High School Musical, pure and simple. If the first High School Musical was a weird little creation that had to provide ample amounts of fun to prove its own existence, High School Musical 2 is coming off its predecessor becoming an unexpected pop culture phenomenon, it could just rest on its laurels and let the High School Musical brand name carry it to massive TV ratings. Sadly, that's just what happened here. Even ignoring that first movie and taking it completely on its own terms, High School Musical 2 is too often a slog, it's storyline being heavy on predictability while lacking the sort of wacky characters or oddball performances that would make such tired writing tolerable or even enjoyable.

The fact that one of our principal characters this go-around is Sharpay is a huge reason why the production falters when it should be soarin' (flyin'). Sharpay gets a massive upgrade in screentime and though Ashley Tisdale is admirably committed to the role, the characters intentionally grating personality works better in smaller doses. Her characters twin brother, Ryan (Lucas Grabeel), at least also gets more screentime, but his quirky edges have been tragically sanded off, though at least Grabeel is still a delight performing the character. Sadly, very few other people in the cast get to really leave an impression here, not even Vanessa Hudgins since we're mostly focused on the tiresome Troy/Sharpay storyline for this film.

At least this plotline leads to the best moments of the entire film in the third act, where the movie finally picks up some energy and gets to come to life. Troy and Gabriella share a tragic break-up duet after three days of mild hardship while Troy has his own equivalent to Kevin Bacon dancing in an abandoned warehouse in Footloose as he belts out Bet On It on an empty golf course while dishing out all kinds of stylized gestures and movements. These scenes are incredibly fun, the sort of hilarious ridiculously cheesy sequences played entirely straight that the first High School Musical had in spades. Why oh why is High School Musical 2 so bereft of such enjoyable sequences?

At least the songs remain enjoyable if more generic in this entry in the High School Musical saga. The aforementioned Bet On It is the best tune of the bunch by far, with Zac Efron (who actually gets to sing all of his songs here!) delivering the kind of earnest determination in his vocals that this song needs.  We get about a dozen new songs here, but over the course of the film's notably overlong 104 minute runtime, it still feels like we get too little music. Trade out some of the rote Troy/Sharpay antics for more boisterous musical numbers, just doing that would have improved High School Musical 2 substantially.