#i kind of love the idea of lonnie being associated with truth especially since he doesn't lie

[sonofapunk]

Anarky (1999) # 5 // Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

In honor of watching Z-o-m-b-i-e-s 2, I’m giving a bit of review of my favorite and not so favorite Disney Channel Musicals, because why not.

Please do note that these are sarcastic as heck and that I do actually enjoy these movies. For the most part, they’re popcorn movies and fun to watch.

High School Musical

With Four movies (and a sort of tv series), I think this is the most profitable saga in the whole channel.

The first one: Fun music, cliché as heck, and really dark when you start to think about it too much. I like the fact that Sharpay is not your typical villain, and Ashely Tisdale portrayal actually makes her more sympathetic than some of the “heroes”… yeah, I’m talking about Chad, who is a total douchebag, and Taylor, who is a complete tool.  

Sharpay (And Ryan’s) crimes? Talking with Mrs. Darbus about changing the date of the callbacks. They didn’t even lie to do this, they just outright said it was highly suspicious that someone who had never shown any interest was now all over it. Mrs. Darbus agreed.  She also “introduced” Gabriella to Taylor. Her only real dick move was talking down Kelsi.

Chad and Taylor? They lie and manipulate their supposed friends. Taylor even only became friends with Gabriella when she thought she could get something out of her.

Then the Decathlon team and the basketball team proceed to cheat on their respective competitions so Troy and Gabriella can show up to callbacks!

ANYWAY. I still know the songs by heart (And Sharpay’s and Ryan repertoire are the most awesome of them all)

The second one:  I loved it, but it really has a weird message… the first one is all “BE YOURSELF”, while this one is all “SUCCUMB TO PEER PRESSURE”. To recap: Troy is sure his parents can’t afford to get him into a good college, so he agrees to suck up to Sharpay and get a job at a resort where her parents are really powerful.  He even manages to get ALL of his friends jobs! (Except Kelsi and Gabriella, who already had jobs there. Sharpay even was the one who told Kelsi about the opening at the club). The first thing they do, literally not even five minutes into the job is to bitch and moan and complain about how hard it is.  Sharpay uses her influences to promote Troy and introduce him to a professional team who are sincerely impressed with this boy. How do his “friends” react? Of course they support him and are happy he will have this once in a lifetime opportunity!

Ha! Nope. They are jealous of him, especially Chad, and bitch and moan and guilt trip him until he falls to peer pressure and ditches every single advantage he got after Gabriella also dumps him for being sexually harassed by Sharpay.  (I’m exaggerating a bit, but seriously, poor Troy)

I also want to point out that for some reason people like to ship Ryan with Chad due to them sharing a song here and switching their hats shirt/jersey, despite Ryan being visibly scared of Chad on the first one, and they don’t even interacting once in the following.

Also I find it hilarious when Troy is jealous of Gabriella talking with Ryan.  

 The music is on par of the first one, and I know most of them by heart too! Again, Sharpay and Ryan’s numbers kick ass, even the weird HumuhumunukukuA’pua’a

The third one: Honestly my least favorite of the saga.  Gabriella dumps Troy for the third time, ghost him and decides that her future is more important (Y’know… the things she dumped Troy for in the second movie) and once again Troy has to fight tooth and nail to get together with her again. I bet Gabriella is dumping him again as you read this.

Some songs are good, but they’re honestly confusing, “I want it all” is a fantasy sequence the first time, but the second time is Ryan’s number in the Musical. “Who’s that girl” was about Kelsi in the rehearsals, but about Sharpay in the actual musical.

The movie do have it’s sweet moments, like Ryan and Kelsi bonding (Who totally are each other’s beards), Sharpay being outsmarted and then deciding to be the baddest bitch.  Chad and Taylor being practically background characters in this one…

Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure: Awesome and well deserved spin off. Ashely Tisdaly performance as Sharpay is one of the things that really made High School Musical stand out. The music is good, the plot is okay-ish. I don’t remember much of the new characters, but Peyton was good for Sharpay’s character development, even if he is sort of a satellite character.

 Camp Rock

The music of both movies is very good, and the first one is okay, but coming right after High School Musical, it felt like a rip off. The music in both is awesome tho.

I barely remember the names of the characters, and the Alpha Bitch character is very… poorly thought off? She’s a mean bitch with some talent, but, like, everyone in that Camp is talented, and is pretty obvious that her mom doesn’t care about her that much, so why bother trying to suck up to her?

The Camp guide… counselor guy is also clearly biased favoring her, yet he knows what kind of a bitch she is, which makes absolute zero sense. Sure, she could complain to her mom about it, but Camp Rock is supposedly super exclusive and famous already. Her blaming the food fight on the protagonist and the other girl was somewhat believable due to how the question of who started it was asked, but her accusing protagonist girl of stealing a bracelet and then hiding it in an extremely obvious open to everyone place. It feels like he actually hates the protagonist.

The second one is even weirder. Camp Rock as THE most famous camp ever in the story of anything, and now we are supposed to believe is an underdog camp who struggles to get by. The antagonist of the previous movie, who was supposed to have learned her lesson switches to the new Camp Star, who is now the most awesome camp in the story of ever, despite being literally new and unknown. Also the protagonist somehow manages to bet the camp away, despite being in no way associated with the owner. And they don’t mentioning it in the original bet… And then they win not through talent and hard work, but for a technicality.

Yay?

 Teen Beach Movie

The first one is awesome and fun to watch. The fish out of water, and the culture whiplash is educative, progressive, and presented in a fun and relatable way (“Like Me”, about the different expectations boys and girls have in both eras) and “Can’t stop singing” is just hilarious. Garret Clayton is just hilarious as Tanner.

The second one has fun moments (“Twist your frown upside down”) but… well, I like it a lot less than the first one. They retcon and change lots of things established, or at least hinted in the first movie. The first one establishes the rules of the musical, and the characters go along with those, while the second one throws those rules and makes it a traditional musical, which makes no sense. The first movie heavily hints that Brady and Mack has been together for some time, and that they meet due to Brady working with Mack’s grandpa… in the second one the grandpa is nowhere to be seen, and now they meet on their own, they had been dating only for that summer and “Wet Side Story” is both their favorite movie, when in the first movie it was said to be Brady’s and Mack’s Grandpa’s favorite movie, and Mack barely knew about it. The first one also threats the main characters equally, while here, Tanner could disappear from the main plot and it would not make a difference.. The second movie is very feminist, which is not bad in itself, but also is very anti-male in the process, which… well, nope.  In the first movie they were both Tanner and Lela were portrayed as slightly ditzy, brainless beauties, but in this one,  Tanner is an outright dumbass, and Lela a freaking genius (Even understanding calculus on her first try).Brady also takes a level on jerkass and is dumber, while in the first one he was more capable and reliable.  And then the ends happens and the movie in universe goes from “Wet Side Story” to “Lela Queen of the Beach”, which sounds incredibly narcissistic and self-centered on Lela’s part… not to mention in the video we are shown Tanner is, again, portrayed as an idiot instead of Lela’s love interest.

Descendants

Do I think the premise is a cash grab? Abso-fucking-lutely? Do I still enjoy every bit of them? HELL YES.

They’re popcorn movies, the First one even has Kristin Chenoweth, which is always a good thing. There are horrifying implications like in Ever After High (Which I have no idea which was “first”, since EAH came first, but there were plans for this long before EAH came into being)

ANYWAY, the plot of the first one is solid, although I honestly think making them animated would have made them a lot more enjoyable. The characters are relatable and sympathetic, even if they’re trying to prove they’re “bad”, it all comes to them being super afraid of their parents. Audrey is a major asshole tho, I have no idea why many people “stan” her, when she’s a horrible person. Chad is also bad, but to be fair, his speech at Family day was only truths, he didn’t even had anything to say against Carlos. “You can do different than your parents” is always a good lesson. Even if that technically applies to Audrey being an evil bitch by choice too.

The second is a bit iffier, with Mal essentially succumbing to the pressure of essentially being seen as the Future Queen, when she has had barely any time to process being good. Also they gave Lonnie a huge role and that also was cool as hell (Even if stupid Hasbro didn’t make a doll of her). Her ship teasing with Jay I could do without. Jane/Carlos was adorable though.  I also hate Uma and how people compare her to Mal, especially Ben. Mal was afraid of Maleficent and wanted to prove herself worthy. Uma did all what she did for herself and herself alone. (This does change in the third movie, but still)

Third one felt rushed as hell. I liked the big reveal of Mal being Hades’ daughter, and I liked Hades. I didn’t liked how they replaced Freddie from the Wicked World shorts for Celia (They could have used the same character FFS!) I really liked Freddie character. She blended well with the other VKs, and somehow managed to become close (And I would dare to say BFF) with Jane… anyway, onto the movie. Audrey is a bitch, she’s completely evil and unrepentant, and the final solution is to break the barrier? … what… I would argue that getting the children should have been a priority and then slowly get the adults out. And the main 4 never encountered their parents again…

I dislike that Lonnie was not there in the third movie, but they compensated that with the bromance between Jay and Gil… like, if Lonnie needed to be out for that bromance to bloom, I’m ok with that. (Seriously, Ben and Mal end up practically engaged, Evie got proof that her thing with Doug was True Love, and Carlos has a budding romance with Jane, Uma/Harry is pretty much also a couple… Jay essentially ends up with Gil as his “pair the spares” partner. )  

Z-O-M-B-I-E-S

It was a good movie, even if the message is a little awkward if you try to apply to the real world. Not that “don’t be racist douchebag” is wrong, but when you portray your minority as a literal race of monsters that eat brains and need the other race to be able to function (The Z bands) yeah…

Anyway, the music is very cool (BAMM is totally my jam) and the Addison / Zed is not as jarring as other examples (They are a lot more healthy than Troy/Gabriela, for example)

I might be gay-biased, but while it is obvious that Bucky is jealous of Zed getting attention, at times he seems jealous of Addison being with Zed.

The make up and characterization of the zombies is also… well, bad. They look like discount Jokers. They could have done something really fun and give each character a different hair color, or at least different shades of green.

In the second… well, they handled “political issues” WAY better than Teen Beach Movie. They didn’t sacrifice characters for this, their attitudes do fit with what they did in the first one. It is a bit annoying that they undo the happy ending of the first one and that Bucky and the ‘Aceys are still racist assholes… actually, the aceys seem to be even MORE assholish than they were in the first movie. And that’s without saying they replaced one of them. Bree is has less screen time than in the first movie, but at least her shiptease with Bonzo did result in them being together (They’re cute!)  

I will also admit I kinda disliked this because the Toy Fair showed the toys and the main werewolf girl was basically a human Clawdeen Wolf (Literally… you can see some comparisons) but the actual character doesn’t look that much like Clawdeen, so no idea why they went that route for the doll.

Addison’s hair looks platinum blonde instead of the white it looked in the first movie. The make up of the zombies is just as bad as the first one. There are scenes in which Zed doesn’t look to have make up.

Addison is not a werewolf, but the prophecy about the “Great Alpha” only shows someone with long white hair… I don’t think it’s mentioned she is a werewolf… and Addison does fulfill said prophecy

There is a scene were Addison is interacting with the only important of the guy Werewolves, Wyatt, and Zed is watching them and gets very jealous… and I couldn’t help but be reminded of the HSM2 scene with Troy being jealous of Ryan… and then at the end Wyatt compliments Bonzo… so yeah.

I liked the werewolves more than the cheerleaders. Wyatt is totally my favorite, and I actually laughed when Zoey gave scritches to the other girl and she ended up enjoying it haha.

Also, Addison is totally and alien.

Or a fairy.

Honorably Mentions:

Lemonade Mouth. This is one of the most boring movies I have seen. I didn’t remember this one until I did a search for the DCOM movies in case I missed one and here it is.

Lizzie Maguire: Not a musical per se, but it did have music in it. Other than the male friend falling hard for the female friend, this is very enjoyable.

The Cheetah Girls. A shame that internal fighting left this saga kind of incomplete. They’re fun movies. Raven-Symone is an awesome singer and actress.

 -

In order of my enjoyment, I would say they are

1. High School Musical

2. Descendants

3. Teen Beach Movie

4. High School Musical 2

5. Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure

6. Descendants 2

7. Z-O-M-B-I-E-S

8. High School Musical 3

9. Descendants 3

10. Camp Rock

11. Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 2

12.  Teen Beach Movie 2

13. Camp Rock 2

Like I said, they all have mostly awesome songs, and are good popcorn movies, so don’t try to look too deep into them.