- Studio: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
- Release Date: Oct 24, 2008
- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
What it lacks in narrative ambition, it makes up for in dazzling choreography.
-
75For the most part, the film's musical numbers are dynamic, propelling the story forward. The same cannot be said about Peter Barsocchini's colorless screenplay.
-
75It's a well-produced yearbook that will one day bring back sweet memories for the cast and fans, but probably won't be of interest to anyone who wasn't part of the scene.
-
Disney raised the stakes by turning its hit TV-movie franchise into a feature film – and the bet has paid off.
-
75A sweet, innocent look at an impossibly idealized high school world.
-
75These are standard youth-movie dilemmas, but they're brought to life by the high-energy cast and the musical numbers, which Ortega shoots with electrifying pizzazz.
-
70This is a movie that offers simple, buouyant pleasures.
-
For those scoring at home, the third entry in the "High School Musical" series is better than the second but doesn't quite sustain the unvarnished, giddy highs of the first.
-
70Exudes genuine appeal, thanks to director Kenny Ortega's brilliant choreography and a gifted cast.
-
70They give excellent value for money, launching into song the way that normal folk go to the bathroom--regularly, politely, and because, if they didn't, well, darn it, they might just burst.
-
67Teenthrob Efron will be missed in future episodes by both adolescent girls and their moms who are only too happy to accompany their daughters to the theatre, but he's a handsome talent who's graduated to bigger projects.
-
63Even if the refreshing gust doesn't stay with you long, it's fun while it lasts.
-
60It's hard to complain about a pop culture phenomenon built on unabashed innocence. And anyway, we might as well get used to it: Neither the movie nor the passionate tween squeals at a recent preview leave any doubt that "HSM 4" is on its way - or that the inevitable "College Musical" will be far behind.
-
60If you're under 12, you won't be disappointed. If you're over 12, the fact this is as funny and bright as it is insipid won't stop you from avoiding it like the plague.
-
60A candy-colored never-never land that Peter Pan might envy.
-
No spoilers here, but there are enough hints that the incoming class of happy-go-lucky theater folk will have plenty to do in the already-in-the-works fourth installment.
-
58Efron is the epitome of sexless Disney heartthrobs, but he's an electrifying song-and-dance man, so much so that his castmates (Bleu excepted) look like they have concrete shoes by comparison.
-
The result unfortunately has the blandness of a mediocre TV sitcom.
-
50Unfortunately, the writing has become so bad that it becomes impossible to keep your head in the game - even as your toes continue to tap to the beat.
-
50For all its unforgivable blandness, "High School Musical" opens young audiences to the charms of this most transporting of movie genres.
-
50High School Musical 3 wore me out, but I'm not the target audience. My favorite high school musical was "Hamlet 2."
-
50Right out of the gate, we realize that bringing the series to the big screen makes the flaws that much more obvious. The voices are too thin, the music and lyrics too simplistic, and the production values are – frankly – too "televisual."
-
50Set against a production design seemingly inspired by the American flag, director Kenny Ortega's choreography is industrial and efficient, if haplessly stranded somewhere between Michael Jackson and the Village People.
-
50While Ortega and fellow choreographers Charles Klapow and Bonnie Story stretch their imaginations, there's something almost lazy about the picture's underachiever script.
-
38There is also something surgically sterile. The movie sounds as though it was recorded in a padded chamber instead of a bustling school, and it looks like it came from some alternate world, one that basks in the eternal sunshine of the spotless skin.
-
25If you're gay and/or eight years old, HSM3 is the movie event of the year.
prev
next
Page:
- 1
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 14 out of 37
-
Mixed: 2 out of 37
-
Negative: 21 out of 37
-
JayH3
-
CuhawkI.4