What does a youth musical or a youth dance-movie need to be able to do?
Apart from rocking, it needs to underline that success can be measured in many different ways, and it needs to encourage the youth to defy authorities, and to find themselves, and their leather jacket. Do you remember these?:

(A short montage of Grease, Dirty Dancing and Footloose follows)

Not since Grease has there been a movie-musical phenomenon as big as the film I'm about to review. High School Musical 3 got BT (ed: a Danish newspaper) to publish an extra section on it this Friday. Because High School Musical is an international TV, merchandise and movie hit, from Disney, and it's a phenomenon that occupies pre-teens the world over.

(A montage from the movie follows, with the reviewer talking over it).

In the latest installment of High School Musical: number 3, the students are putting up a musical at their school, and meanwhile they are faced with the choice of what they are going to do after their graduation.

I haven't seen number 1 and 2, but with Footloose, Dirty Dancing and even Grease in the back of my mind, High School Musical 3 looks like a propanganda film created by reactionary parents and the American Ministry of Education.
The film is clinically cleansed of loosers and people that stick a little bit out in the crowd, and it is a brilliant example of a pedagogical method of motivation that is based on FEAR.
Fear of defeat, fear of inaddiquasy, fear of humiliation. There is no room for mediocracy or small ambitions, so stand up straight while you are young and in school, and: "allow yourself to be great", as we hear in the movie.

This is the stuff anorechsia and High School massacres are made of.
High School Musical makes me think of what one of the creators of South Park: Matt Stone, has said about the American educational system:

(A clip from Bowling For Columbine follows: it's an interview with Matt Stone)

Matt Stone wrote:

I remember being in 6th grade and I had to take the math test to get into honour's math in 7th grade, and they were like: "Don't screw this up, because if you screw this up you won't get into honour's math in 7th grade and of course, if you don't get into honour's math in 7th grade you won't get into honour's math in 8th grade, and then not in 9th grade, and 10th grade, 11th grade, and then you'll just die poor and lonely."
And that's it, you know what I mean, it's like... you know, you believe in high school and alot of it's kids, but the teacher's and counselors and principals don't help things. They scare you into conforming and doing good in school, by saying: "If you're a looser now, you're gonna be a looser forever"

High School Musical preaches that every single moment is crucial to the rest of one's life, and that is of course a wonderful preasure to perform to place on children and teenagers.
Let's have a look at a couple of quotes, to get a feel for the rethoric in the movie.

In the locker room the coach says:
"make this moment last"

The prom is:
"A night to live forever"
...so I guess you better hope you have a date that evening.

"This is our last chance to get it right", "This is our last chance to make our mark", "History will know who we are"
and so on and so on...

So it is these student's last chance to get themselves written into history, and their about... 17 years old...
Kids can be whatever they want to be, as long the result of their efforts is some form of absolute greatness, the movie tells us.

The cast is smartly put together, so that the biggest, most readily digestable minorities in American society are represented: blacks and hispanics. It is basically un-controversial, thoroughly tested minorities.

There are no Chinese people and (Asian) Indians, the kind of weird minorities that use ginger in their cooking.
One can of course choose to shrug over a movie like High School Musical, and think: "boy how campy and funny in a Beverly Hills 90210 kinda way", but I don't think it is inconsequetial what we tell our kids.

I'm not so worried about Danish kids being exposed to High School Musical, because we have a powerful tradition of children's TV and movies, to create a counterweight, and to tell the kids that it is completely acceptable to fail.

But I get nervous on behalf of American kids, because if this is the expression of a dominating American pedagogy, then it is not the last time they have seen a High School student express his sense of defeat with a automatic rifle.
Because there is of course more than one way to get yourself written into history.

(The review closes with a clip from Gus Van Sant's movie: "Elephant&quot

In a High School cafeteria a boy walks around writting in a notebook. A girl notices.
Girl: "What are you writing?"
Boy: "Oh this? This is my plan"
Girl: "For what?"
Boy: "oh you'll see"

 

At the end of the program the reviewer gives High School Musical 1 of 6 stars, and says:
"High School Musical 3 gets one star for remnants of enthusiasm in the Dancing scenes, and for it's references to better films."