Another childhood classic that skipped me by made available through Disney+. I can see why it became such a huge movie, but man are there some bad aspects to this film. I'd say that the cast did a pretty great job with an... acceptable script, though even the soon-to-be megastars Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens show their inexperience here. I was also actually a little surprised that Efron wasn't an amazing singer, particularly when paired with Hudgens who is obviously fantastic. Still, he's good enough, particularly for the, well, lacklustre tracks on offer. This was another surprise, but basically outside of their main duet, the songs in High School Musical are pretty bad. Lyrics often feel forced, melodies are just boring, and they're very repetitious, to the point of feeling like they were just padding out the run time.

Still, I enjoyed the characters enough to feel some emotional attachment by the end, and that final song/scheme duo was a lot of fun. You also can't knock the film's message and it does occasionally throw a curveball that makes you chuckle or feels a little more than the sum of its parts. My favourite of these is probably the consistent subplot of the other basketball player being a secret baker 😁

I think my big takeaway here is: you have to remember this was a Disney Channel movie that blew UP! Combine that with some main stars who were pretty unknown at the time and a lot of the biggest issues can be forgiven, but it's still a TV movie at heart. Oh, and that Glee really did rip off a lot of their initial setup from this movie, didn't they!