14 out of 14 people found this review helpful.
Even More Hype, and Less Entertaining
Date of Review: Sep 15, 2008
The Bottom Line: I would recommend it for the target pre-teen audience, but don't expect the fireworks of HSM 1.
The hype from Disney was even greater for this movie than the first. Months before it premiered everyone knew what was about, saw the dances and heard the songs. In fact, the first time we watched the movie, my entire family could sing the songs and my girls, 6 and 8 at the time, could do all the dances.
Different location but similar premise at the first- the happy couple of Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez face obstacles that threaten to destroy their high school romance.
This time, the story takes place at an exclusive ritzy camp, Sharpay Evans' home away from home. Sharpay fenagles to get Troy hired to work at the camp for the summer, hoping to steal him from Gabriella. In a mixup, all of the students from the Albuquerque high school are hired. Interestingly, it is not Sharpay's deviousness that cause problems for Troy and Gabriella, but Troy's own actions in abandoning his friends to hang out with the adults who can help him get ahead.
This movie was not as good as the first for a number of reasons. First, some of the songs were not as good, particularly Troy's "Bet On It", which was sort of painful to listen to and watch. My girls both laughed hysyerically during the number and said Troy danced like a girl. Related to this, the dancing was not quite as good, although I thought "Work This Out", was good, the baseball diamond, "I Don't Dance," was not as entertaining to my kids as the basketball number from the first movie, and they make me skip past the song on the CD.
The other problems in this movie were plot related. My girls kept asking why Troy was being so mean and decided they didn't think Gabriella should take him back, which to me is a huge flaw. If your target audience decides the reunion of the couple is not worth it, either your plot or your characters need retooling.
Second, when Gabriella came back at the end of the movie, my kids were full of questions, making me realize the ending was not worked out very well. The girls wanted to know what made Gabriella come back, how did she know to come back, how did she know the song, how could they sing the song together without practicing when they had to practice so much in the first movie.
While I wouldn't say this was a bad movie, because it did have some entertaining songs and dances, and did have the Disney happy ending, it had several flaws that made it not as high a caliber of movie as the original. I would still recommend it as a fun, wholesome family movie, I just wouldn't do so as enthusiastically as I did for the first one.
