Grading on a Groove

With a Spring in Its Steps, 'High School Musical 3' Aces Its Higher Class

The theatrical debut of the monster Disney Channel hit "High School Musical" raises several urgent questions: Will the TV movie franchise translate to the big screen? Will Troy (Zac Efron) stay in New Mexico to play basketball for the local university or go to New York to be the Romeo of Juilliard? What will become of his made-in-heaven romance with the brainy and beautiful Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens)?

And, for the love of Bob Fosse and all that's holy, what is Gov. Bill Richardson putting in the school lunches out there?

Set in the preternaturally clean and well-lit East High School, "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" offers a resounding yes to the first question, splashing brightly across the screen like a spilled bag of Skittles. A nonstop barrage of poppy power ballads and ambitious production numbers, this is a movie that unapologetically subscribes to the "more is more" school of entertainment, with each sequence proving somehow more dazzling than the last. Like last summer's "Mamma Mia!," it's also a movie aimed laserlike at one constituency: the fans. But unlike that train wreck of miscasting and forced cheer, and despite its own synthetic, overprocessed production values, "High School Musical 3" exudes genuine appeal, thanks to director Kenny Ortega's brilliant choreography and a gifted cast.

That hyper-talented ensemble is headed by the bedroom-eyed Efron, a startlingly handsome young man who at 21 still manages to play a tortured 18-year-old with credibility. As "High School Musical 3" opens, Troy and his best friend, Chad (the wonderful Corbin Bleu), are pulling out yet another victory for the Wildcats basketball team, and Ortega uses the game as his first opportunity for an ingenious song-and-dance number involving the team, their fans and two squads of limber cheerleaders. Ortega keeps the showstoppers coming with metronomic precision, from an over-the-top fame-and-fortune fantasy number performed by twins Ryan and Sharpay Evans (Lucas Grabeel and Ashley Tisdale) and Troy and Chad's muscular dance duet set in a junkyard to a make-you-queasy sequence in which Troy agonizes over his future while the walls of East High slip and slide like a midway fun house.

The future is what tempts and frightens the characters who have become beloved friends since Disney made the first "High School Musical" TV movie in 2006. With graduation, the prom and the year's final school musical looming, everyone, it seems, has a decision to make -- including Gabriella, who must choose between going to the prom with Troy or leaving early for a freshman honors program at Stanford.

Okay, okay: At a time when many families don't know if they can afford to send their kids to any college, the agonies visited on the East High kids seem pretty low-stakes. But that's what makes the escapism of "High School Musical 3" so welcome -- that, and the utterly believable chemistry of Efron and Hudgens, who acquit their duties as this generation's Frankie and Annette with easygoing charm.

With its appealing cast and eye-popping dance numbers, it's a shame that "High School Musical 3" falls flat when the players open their mouths to sing. That's when all pretense to spontaneity and warmth disappears and, instead of recognizably human voices, weirdly synthesized noises come out, as if the entire cast had studied at the Peter Frampton School of Vocalization. The klutzy karaoke is at its most distracting during Efron and Hudgens's duets -- especially one set on East's garden rooftop, culminating in one of the movie's frequent cloudbursts.

Still, when Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay and the rest of those cockeyed kids get together for yet another gleeful ensemble number, it's nearly impossible not to be taken in. As he's proved before in such classics as "Dirty Dancing" and "Newsies," Ortega is a master choreographer, especially with big group numbers, in which he combines the athletic style made popular on MTV and the jazzier, more classical moves of Jerome Robbins (not to mention Mr. Fosse himself).

Even at its most calculated and ersatz, Disney should be commended for giving a generation raised on animated musicals such as "The Little Mermaid" and "Aladdin" their own 'tweenified toe-tappers, thereby keeping the endangered genre of the big movie musical alive to step-ball-change another day. And who knows? "High School Musical 3" just may inspire its fans to discover the form's masterpieces on Netflix -- and find out that musicals can be a lot more than just syncin' in the rain.

High School Musical 3: Senior Year (112 minutes, at area theaters) is rated G.