ON TV

'High School Musical 2' debuts Friday as Disney's pop-culture phenomenon fuels a cottage industry

By Diane Holloway
AMERICAN-STATESMAN TELEVISION WRITER
Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Do you have Friday, Aug. 17 marked on your calendar? No? Then you are not a child, a tween or even a not-yet-cynical teen. You're probably not a parent or (no offense intended) a functioning observer of American popular culture either.

Friday is the day that Troy and Gabriella will hoof and warble back into view, along with all their East High Wildcat friends and enemies. Tweeny-boppers everywhere are atwitter.

"High School Musical 2," the breathlessly anticipated sequel to last year's pop-culture phenomenon, premieres Friday on the Disney Channel. But, of course, there's more. The extravaganza continues through the weekend with a Saturday repeat of the movie hosted by the young cast and a Sunday repeat in the sing-along format.

The original cast is back with 10 elaborate new production numbers, which somehow came together after only three weeks of rehearsal. (Ah, youth!) Songs and dances take up more real estate than the slender story line — about choosing true friends over material temptations — and that's a good thing.

"The challenge is not to do it better but to do it different," Disney Channel's entertainment president Gary Marsh said of his golden egg in Los Angeles recently. "Music is one of our building blocks. It's in our DNA. It connects kids and families across all socioeconomic and ethnic lines."

The original TV movie, which premiered in January 2006, was a magnet that drew more than 160 million viewers in more than 100 countries worldwide. The soundtrack was the top-selling album of 2006, and the movie's DVD was the top-seller, too. Stage versions of the musical have cropped up in more than 1,500 high school and professional theaters (including a recent production at Austin's Zachary Scott Theatre). Concert tours at home and abroad have sold out, and a series of junior novels are best-sellers.

And "HSM" isn't even close to fading. A big-screen movie is in the works for next year, along with at least one more TV movie. Coming to TV in the fall is a documentary by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple about a high-school production of the musical in Fort Worth, and later this year an ice show will tour the country.

In other words, this modest little Disney musical has blossomed into a sensation of seismic magnitude.

" 'High School Musical' has turned on a whole new generation to musicals," said award-winning director/choreographer Kenny Ortega ("Dirty Dancing," "Newsies"). "Kids like musical storytelling. They want more of it, and that is a thrill. That's a great legacy."

To recap the original, for those who have been hiding in caves: Basketball star Troy (Zac Efron) and brainy newcomer Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens), two high school students from rival cliques, tried out for their high school musical and fell in love. Both were teased mercilessly by their respective jock and brainiac pals. Their chief nemesis was the unfortunately named Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale), a snooty drama queen who wanted Troy to herself and the lead in the play. She got neither.

The sequel picks up in the summer after the original story, with Sharpay plotting revenge, and Troy and Gabriella still goofy for each other. Sharpay finagles a job for Troy at her father's country club to pluck him away from Gabriella, but her scheme, which includes serious bribery, wobbles when Troy arranges for his jock pals and Gabriella to work at the club, too.

While the original movie was about expanding horizons, the sequel focuses on moral integrity. As you would expect from a Disney movie, the film is squeaky clean and wholesome — and so, apparently, are its stars.

This particular branch of young Hollywood doesn't hang out with Paris or Lindsay, and not a single one of them has served time in rehab. The raciest thing the tabloids have been able to dig up on them is that Efron and Hudgens are dating in real life.

"I was always paired in auditions with Vanessa," Efron said in Los Angeles recently, shuffling his feet and fighting off a fast-creeping blush. "At first we thought it was a bad sign, that they wanted to get rid of us both. But we kind of clicked from the beginning."

Efron, flashing those neon-blue eyes, looks to be the "HSM" breakout star, with a co-starring role in this summer's big-screen musical "Hairspray" and a new deal to film a remake of the Kevin Bacon film "Footloose." But all the young actors have shown talent and maturity far beyond their teen and twentysomething years and likely will have careers beyond "HSM."

"We all share passion for musicals and acting," said Hudgens, 18. "I was so surprised when 'High School Musical' became such a hit. I'm still blown away by it."

Hudgens gets a bit misty when she recalls performing in Times Square for "Good Morning America" after the little TV movie became a blockbuster.

"I'd never even been to New York before," she said. "It was just so amazing ... I was really touched and just appreciative of everything that's happened."

Corbin Bleu, 18, who plays Troy's best friend Chad, still has trouble wrapping his mind around the memory of 65,000 screaming fans at an "HSM" concert in São Paulo, Brazil.

"I don't know why it's a worldwide phenomenon," Bleu said. "Music is a universal language, especially with kids. There's magic to it."

Monique Coleman, who plays Gabriella's friend Taylor, parlayed her Disney fame into an impressive run on "Dancing with the Stars." The 26-year-old actor said the cast takes its role-model status seriously.

"We're in a position to make really good choices now," Coleman said. "This is such an awesome opportunity. Why would you want to risk ruining it?"

"HSM" just might be bigger, in all its incarnations, than "Grease," the John Travolta-Olivia Newton-John musical with which it is often compared. And we're talking cultural as well as economic hugeness.

" 'High School Musical' gave permission for boys to be in musicals," said Kopple, whose serious-minded films include the Oscar-winning "Harlan County USA" (about a Kentucky coal miners' strike) and "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing."

Kopple's upcoming documentary, "High School Musical: The Music in You," will follow two Fort Worth high schools — Arlington Heights and Western Hills — as they put aside their traditional rivalries and come together to put on the play.

"How can you resist getting into the hearts and souls of teenagers and having them open up to you, go on that journey of laughter and tears and teenage angst and boyfriends and girlfriends and struggling to really work to get their parts down?" Kopple gushed.

Millions of people won't even try to resist. This weekend the seismic sensation is about to explode all over again. Yes, the story is sappy, but the songs are sweet and the dancing, especially an outdoor production number on a baseball diamond ("I Don't Dance") is spectacular by anyone's standards.