Now for something really horrible: Disney’s vision of adolescence.

Meet star basketball player Troy (Zac Efron) and lonely bookworm Gabrielle (Vanessa Anne Hudgens), two teens as far apart as you can be without breaking the Stepford mold Disney’s live action movies use to create characters. Through pure happenstance, both are forced to sing Karaoke together at a gutless, New Year’s Eve “kids” Party. As they do so, both manifest the strange and fantastic powers possessed by all major characters in musicals, singing a song they’ve never heard before perfectly, complete with overproduced, generic “oooh”s and “yeah”s that inspire cheering accolades from all the dumbshits in their audience. Said dumbshits drop whatever it is they’re doing to form a pan-worthy tableau behind our two leads.  Here I thought audiences typically gathered in front of performers. I didn’t count on this being Opposite Day is Disneyland. Or the fact that Disneyland is a such a demon-haunted world. Continue reading High School Musical (2006) →