So let me "break this down for you": In "High School Musical 3: Senior Year," teen dreamboat Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) is dealing with a lot of problems. Gifted at both sports and theater (gasp), Troy doesn't know what to pursue. He wants to follow his best friend Chad (Corbin Bleu) and play basketball at the fictional University of Albuquerque, but his burning theatrical passions are keeping him back. To make matters worse, he's up for a Juilliard scholarship, and as if this weren't enough, Troy's heart beckons to a different call.
Long-time girlfriend Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens) has been accepted to Stanford early, leaving Troy and high school behind. When the distance becomes too much, she has to break it off, which leaves Troy devastated. Torn between his three life passions, the movie revolves around Troy's decisions about his impending future.
There are a lot of subplots that involve the rest of the High School Musical gang, but it's mostly just the drama diva Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) and her demands that she one day become a star and be in her own one-woman show. Everything else is just filler stories where pretty much everyone falls in love with everyone just in time for prom, an evening that will be "a night to remember" - just like it was back in high school, right?
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention: there are songs that go along with this elongated "Degrassi" episode. The music is hard to describe in words, but it's basically '90s boy-band sensation meets 2000s R&B meets the gaudiness of musical theater. It's the pinnacle of commercial cheesiness, but this is Disney, and you gotta love Disney.
This movie was made for young, naive teenyboppers who are unscathed by the cynicism of puberty and love this kind of stuff (lest this generation forget the time when boy bands roamed the earth). So why should you, a college student, see this movie? It's really bad, but laughably so. It's something you can enjoy seeing with a cavalcade of friends while you form countless inside jokes over the knowledge that it's incomparably lame. It could be an amusing bonding experience that truly transforms into a night to remember, or at least one with a couple good stories.
