Another Movie Review

Just a few days ago I was unexpectedly met with a very disturbing incident that begs to be recounted here. Some of you may remember how, in the earliest days of this blog, I reviewed what is still probably the worst movie ever made, “The Hugga-Bunch”. That movie, unfortunately, now has a rival for that dubious distinction – in fact, this new one is so awful as to give the former a run for its money (of which it has none, since nobody ever saw it, for free or otherwise).
Last Saturday my sister Jessica was going out shopping with her friend Elissa. They made an offhand remark before they left that when they returned we would all watch “High School Musical 3”, which Jess had just rented from the library. I laughed it off at the time, because I knew that Jess’s fiancé David would also be over at that later time, and the two girls would surely not ever make us men watch something like that with them – right? Apparently after a quarter-century of life I do not yet know the female mind very well. Yes, folks, they would indeed do something that bad – nay – cruel, heartless, and downright spiteful.
Let me just, as an aside (but not as an author’s note), make a remark about the number in “High School Musical 3”. No, three is not my favorite number, and nor is it, at least in this case, the number of perfection as some people claim. It is, however, a very appalling number because of what it implies – namely, that there were two other “High School Musicals” before this one. The idea alone makes me want to withdraw from society for the next fifty years. How they could ever force one of these monstrosities on the viewing public is repulsive to my sensitive soul, and the fact that three such miscarriages of cinematography have been released without any criminal prosecution borders on the unthinkable.
I repeat that I laughed off the offhand remark that there would be a “movie night” featuring “High School Musical 3”. Such foolishness would be akin to Dorothy laughing it off when the Wicked Witch of the West warned her, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!” The only problem here is that I did not have three friends (with or without a heart or a brain or courage) to help me get out of the castle once the Flying Monkeys had carried me off. And I certainly could not have thrown a bucket of water on our television set. For one thing, that wouldn’t have made it melt, and for another, even if it had damaged the electronics to such a degree as to make the movie stop, my parents would have still been quite upset with me since the set cost a lot of money.
My laughter turned to tears later in the evening when the shoppers returned and remained true to their intention to have a “movie night”. Both David and I knew, without even watching it first, that this was going to be an awful example of what they call a “chick flick” (the notion itself will cause most normal guys to voluntarily ask to be water-boarded rather than to be subjected to such torture). But none of our valiant efforts caused our tormentors to budge from their evil intent.*
So we four watched “High School Musical 3”. It is very simple to suggest that I could have fallen asleep during the movie, but that would have been as simple as falling asleep during a root canal. So since I was painfully awake throughout, let me now describe for you the cinematic transgressions of this terrible film.
The plot was very simple, albeit bereft of anything remotely interesting. A group of close-knit high-school students are in their senior year, about to enter a whole new world, and struggling with everything from their hormones to their college intentions (Yale or Stanford or Juliard? Hmmmm…that’s a tough one, all right…I mean, doesn’t everybody get to go there? I want something elite!). They make a musical together and sort of resolve all their problems by film’s end.
Seriously – that is not enough to keep the interest of any male for more than five seconds, if that. I would rather watch a documentary about how paint dries. No, seriously.
If it had been only that, I would have called it the most boring movie ever made and left it at that. But that was not all that there was. You see, it was a musical. Which means they sang. Picture this if you can – a guy is in a treehouse with his girlfriend, and as they share a mushy moment, music starts playing from some unseen source and, with a completely straight face, both of them start singing corny songs to each other and dancing to them.** And such was the case throughout the movie. Perhaps the most disturbing song was sung by two guys who were pretending to be little boys again – again, with a completely straight face, as if all of us are prone to bursting forth into a very corny song some days as a matter of course. Couple that with the fact that, although this movie was made in this decade, the music barely seemed to have left the early 1990s, and you get only a slight idea of what I went through.
Not to mention that one male character in the movie was fruitier than the fruitcake I ate last Christmas – which is very hard for a real man to watch without throwing up. And the fact that he hung around with a girl halfway through the movie did not pull the wool over my eyes. Besides that, the movie wasn’t really even very funny – unless you count the parts that made the girls giggle, which never means that it’s funny, only that it’s “cute” for one of several million possible reasons. And if I am going to watch a movie chock-full of corny songs and dancing, and utterly devoid of an interesting plot, then at least I must have some humor. But I suppose that was too much to ask for.***
Thankfully, none of the music from “High School Musical 3” has remained stuck in my head, and my sister has so far not wanted me to play “I like the part where…” with her. Thus this movie has just about completely exited from my consciousness. But I have learned a valuable lesson. Girls value “chick flicks”, not for their intrinsic value (they have none), but as a weapon. They love to make guys watch them because they make us squirm and roll our eyes and come dangerously close to vomiting on the floor or living room furniture. And in their twisted minds they believe that this is worth the price of admission. Let me fire a warning shot – if I am ever married, the only reason I will ever watch a “chick flick” is to be nice. But it will only be once per decade, and it will be the movie of my choosing, not hers. If it is more frequent than that or chosen by another, I will be in the “man-cave” watching paint dry. That is all.


*Author’s Note: Do not let anyone tell you that we were not forced to watch this movie, or that we could have done something else like go play with Play-Doh. It simply isn’t true, and I won’t stand for it. Suffice it to say that there was no way out.

**Author’s Note: To any girl who tells me that a real man will sing and dance for his girlfriend, I will politely reply that such is not so. There are much better and more refined ways to express affection than that.

***Author’s Note: I suppose that part of my problem was that I could not identify with the characters. After all, I began homeschooling after the second grade, and when I was in my senior year of high school, I was the only person in my class.