As mentioned yesterday, I have a weakness for a good musical, so I had high hopes for this film. It’s been a long time since there’s been any new musicals made as a movie, and this one has supposedly given a whole new generation the urge to learn to sing and dance and perform.

I have to say though, as much as I was looking forward to it, I ended up being pretty disappointed. It’s not that it was awful, because it actually wasn’t, it just wasn’t all that good either…

As it happens this is on TV later this afternoon, so given it only came out on DVD about 3 weeks ago, is a fair sign that they weren’t expecting great things from it over here.

On the whole the acting was pretty good, there was nobody particularly annoying, although the drama teacher was way over the top and would probably have become very irritating had she received more screen time than she did.

The plot was reasonable, or at least I’ve seen far worse. My biggest problem with the whole thing was the musical numbers.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, or maybe it’s just because I’m old enough to remember how musicals are supposed to be done, but when i watch a musical I expect big-band, rousing numbers that make you want to jump up and join in, or they’re the emotional power-ballad style that has you crumpled up in a sobbing mass.

I didn’t find a single song like that here, these were cheesy pop-songs at best, and not exactly startling or memorable ones at that either.

It didn’t help that the two lead singers ( Zac Efron and Vanessa Anne Hudgens)had rather wimpy “sweet” little voices, nothing spectacular and nothing that really stood out.

The funny thing was that the lead boy (Zac Efron) only actually sang around 5 lines during the entire film because they felt his voice was the wrong pitch, so most of the singing was dubbed by someone else. Yet the few lines I managed to find sung by Zac actually sounded slightly rougher and more edgy than the person they’d got to dub them.

Given the songs and the dance routines, no voice was going to save them from being pure cheese, but it might have helped blend the voices better so you didn’t spend every song thinking “One-hit teen pop number”.

Over all, it was pleasant watchable rubbish, but not something I’m going to be watching all that often, and not something that is ever going to stand up against the old-school musicals like Greese, Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the likes.