"High School Musical 2": B Flat

If there's ever been a film that accentuated the gap between today's youngsters and my generation, it's been High School Musical. I caught tons of flack in sixth grade just for liking Grease, yet scores of preteeny boppers today have gone nuts over this tunetastic Disney Channel creation. I still can't fathom how it got popular enough to spawn a line of merchandising that would make the SpongeBob brand look underachieving, but I guess a sequel was a logical step after the first movie racked up some of the biggest ratings in the channel's history. But if anything, High School Musical 2 is a hollow victory for the Disney Channel crew, for while it's not really any worse than its predecessor, it's still a massive pile of pure idiocy on a similar scale.

High School Musical 2 picks up on a most sacred occasion for the students of East High School: the first day of summer break. Young sweethearts Troy (Zac Efron) and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens), as well as all their friends, are in search of a little work to earn some cash over their vacation time. Out of nowhere, Troy lands a job at a ritzy country club, even managing to get Gabriella and pretty much the whole East High gang in there too. What Troy doesn't know, however, is that it's all a ploy by spoiled brat/drama club maven Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) to woo him away from Gabriella and use him to help secure a victory in the club's upcoming talent show. Promises of a bright collegiate future do the trick in causing Troy to stray further and further from his friends, a problem that's going to take a little more than a few song-and-dance numbers to fix.