No No! Stick To The Status Quo: High School Musical (2006)

I when first undertaking the "experience" that proved to be High School Musical I thought that I would just pick the most absurd line in the entire film as the quote for the blog title.  There were quite a few options to choose from, but while watching I realized that the "Stick To The Status Quo" song which is apparently intended to promote diversity and extending beyond one's assumed roles in life, is really quite arbitrary in a film that suggests as long as you stick to your original accepted lifestyle, it is permissible to be curious about the world around you, but again as long as you are successful at your socially prescribed role.  I understand that this was a made for television movie that aired on Disney Channel, but damn if it was not the most popular thing upon the time of its release, particularly for a young and impressionable crowd of people, who might have seen the half-hearted, poorly made movie as a sign of pushing diversity or new ideas into the world.  I am not lying when I say that some of the acting and production value at play in High School Musical is worse than The Room.  At least, there is a sense of endearing misdirection in the so-bad-it's-good cult classic, here considering the budget dumped on this film, it is inconceivable that it is anything less than well-executed.  In terms of a musical, High School Musical also falters considerably as it relies on glaringly obvious post-production sound and is so heavily edited during the choreographed sequences as to make one wonder as to whether or not any performer knew their dance routine beyond say two or three steps.  If Disney was ever clear in its failed intents on promoting diversity, it is right here in this film that almost seems smug in how well it is able to check off its "look we have this person of color" checklist and does the bare minimum necessary to deal with any sort of body politics.  Stick to the status quo, while not the intended mantra of this inconceivably bad piece of television movie execution, nonetheless, proves to be its reality.  Indeed, High School Musical is so concerned with middle-grade normative execution in terms of narrative that at times it almost seems to be ironic, and where it released by any other company than Disney I might be able to follow such a possibility.  Here, however, it is just in bad taste.

High School Musical begins in some bizarre space of a Christmas break resort, where the young Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) finds himself more occupied with spending time with his dad and school basketball coach Jack Bolton (Bart Johnson) than taking in the festivities created for him and the others at the resort.  At the prodding of his mother, he agrees to attend a social for teenagers, where he is forced to sing karaoke alongside Gabrielle Montez (Vanessa Hudgens).  The two, despite their initial nervousness, hit it off and find themselves exchanging numbers, only to lose each other in the crowd of New Years partiers.  When Troy returns to school the following week, he discovers his basketball teams, most notably Chad (Corbin Bleu) in place, alongside his admirer and school drama star Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale) in line to engage in another normal year of school, with Troy as star basketball player and Sharpay as theatrical ingenue.  Yet, when Troy turns in class to discover Gabrielle in attendance he is immediately exited, realizing that it is his opportunity to rekindle their burgeoning interest from the break, a stroke a fate too great to pass up.  Both concerned with their ability to fit in under varied demands, Troy remaining a symbol of athletic prowess and Gabrielle navigating between being welcomed and avoiding becoming the brainiac girl, the two coalesce on auditioning for the drama departments annual musical, much to the confusion of the faux-erudite drama teacher Ms. Darbus (Alyson Reed).  The confusion is quickly removed when the two sing and all in attendance realize their skill, particularly the apprehensive Sharpay and her performance partner, sibling Ryan (Lucas Grabeel).  Needless to say sabotage becomes a thing of necessity as not only do the Evans siblings see the danger in their success, Chad and leader of the academic team Taylor McKessie (Monique Coleman) also want to quash their dreams, hoping that by doing so their respective organizations will succeed. After tricking the two into stepping down, the guilt proves to great and they manage to fix the status of both the big game and academic match to afford the two auditioning time, much to the pleasure of the entire school.  In the end the two rekindle their romance and a few other heteronormative pairings happen as a result.

This movie is half-concieved.  Hell, I would even go so far a to say that it was lacking in any sort of conceptual understanding of narrative gaps at all.  There are moments of contradiction in this film that just seem absolutely wrong to the point of being frustrating.  Set in the most nondescript of places Albuquerque, New Mexico, High School Musical pushes to create a space where all persons are represented.  Indeed, this is a rather normal trope in regards to the high school film, but it is also used in a much more knowing irony in say a John Hughes movie, or definitely so in Clueless. Here it is solely a result of a group of producers thinking they could profit hugely from creating a piece of young adult media that could be consumed by all.  However, the only people who would buy such malarky would have to be from upper-middle class status, although in such a situation as to believe that they are still situated within a lower class identity.  High School Musical, in fact, suffers most from its seeming willingness to embrace a society where all persons are on an equal financial footing.    Take for example, Troy's dad and his emphasis on the financial burden which will be removed from their family if he were to gain a scholarship.  The amount of escapist idealism here is treated with the same sense of urgency at play in the deeply moving and socially troubling documentary Hoop Dreams.  Were it to be a narrative where Troy was clearly from an impoverished family this would be less complicated morally, but it is worth remembering that the film begins with he and his family at a winter resort, in which money is clearly necessary to obtain.  If this were not enough, however, the fact that Troy is able to also play basketball on a regulation size court in his own backyard is a rather huge advantage and one that is afforded to a person of considerable wealth.  This is all layered on top of a reality where the students at this school are privileged with the funds to have a drama, sports and academic department that are fully funded and capable of pulling together full teams with the newest equipment and resources.  Without rambling further, High School Musical suffers most from its refusal to acknowledge the privilege within which it situations its narrative.

Key Scene:  ...ummm, there is a line that Coach Bolton delivers that is nearly inaudible, I guess it is my favorite part of the film.

Avoid this film, I watched it so you do not have to, instead, go watch a Busby Berkeley musical.  Also Zac Efron has the stupidest faces in this movie.

You're Just Bitter Because You Got Shot: Ninja Cheerleaders (2008)

I always think I will get to a point in my viewing of films where I will no longer be expressly disturbed by a terrible film, one whose very existence defies all logic or explanation, even if it were to be independently produced.  Indeed, there are bad movies that have a noticeable degree of earnestness abut them that afford them a cult status, works like The Room, Birdemic and even Plan 9 from Outer Space are wonderful because their filmmakers did not detach themselves ironically from the work, but genuinely thought they were producing something of high art.  Nothing is worse in my book than a bad filmmaker who has a detached sense of irony about the work they are producing.  Ninja Cheerleaders is one such work, wherein, the filmmaker, David Presley, wants to show how god damn well he "gets" his material, in the process, sacrificing any sense of enjoyability and on a very basic level watchability.  I mean a film about community college girls who hope to strip their way to an Ivy League school that also happen to moonlight as ninjas is the stuff of exploitation cult cinema that could work in almost any directors hands, were they to even remotely consider it a narrative that could be told without constantly drawing their "cleverness" out within the narrative.  The further shame of the film is that there are components that do genuinely work, particularly whoever was hired as the film's set designer, because they clearly have a feel for mise-en-scene, tragically, it is lost in the focus on the three girls being sexy and smart to the point of being seemingly unstoppable.  Presley clearly wanted his film to be cool, right down to his predictable music choices and already dated stylistic choices, mind you the film came out only five years ago and it manages to feel like an early 2000's episode of Real World, a look that is not countered in the slightest by the very real casting of a former Real World member in the cast.  Of course, the biggest injustice of the film is incorporating George Takei into your film and not providing him a space to deliver his campy acting in all its glory.  Indeed, if the rest of the movie reflected anything close to Takei's zealous over-the-top line delivery it might have become a contemporary exploitation classic.  It appears as though Presley though he was directing a low-fi version of Kill Bill, but the result is something more indicative of a freshman film students flailing attempt to recreate his favorite scenes from Tarantino films.

Ninja Cheerleaders focus on a clique of "attractive" white girls whose life at a rundown Los Angeles community college are only made bearable by the idea that they will eventually be able to leave for Brown.  The three girls include the voracious and brooding April (Ginny Weirick), the clearly too old for community college, but wants to live the dream of being young again Courtney (Trishelle Cannattella) and the ditzy to the point of nausea Monica (Maitland McConnell).  Of course, Brown is an expensive and decidedly inclusive school, although the three are exemplary students at the community college, all holding the difficult to attain 4.0, which is enough academically to earn the three acceptance.  The money is still an issue though, considering that they all come from working class families, although their style and maintenance would suggest otherwise, therefore, they find a means of success working as go-go dancers for a local strip club, where they are the favorite of customers.  Furthermore, they have also entered a stripping contest which, if they win first place will provided them with another fifty thousand dollars towards their tuition.  The strip club they work at is run by the aging Hiroshi (George Takei) who also happens to serve as a sensei to the three girls that are training in the dark martial arts of ninja.  Things finally seem to have fallen into place when the girls get the last bit of necessary money, only to have a group of mobsters step into the picture and raid Hiroshi's club, shooting him, ransacking the place and more tragically stealing the girls' hard earned money from the club vault.  This act leads the girls on a wild vendetta where they hunt down the various mobsters and systematically move their way to the top man in the operation, who is apparently only attempting to challenge the club because he wants to reinvigorate the name of his family in the city.  Realizing the power of the three girls, he hires a ninja from the black clan in Japan named Kinji (Natasha Chang), who proves a formidable opponent for the girls, but not or Hiroshi when he steps in to deliver the fatal blow to the mob's hired hand.  In the end the three girls obtain their money and are able to move forward with their dreams of living it up as strippers turned assassins turned Ivy Leaguers.

This movie is so unwatchable, that I found myself strongly considering banging my head against the wall in protest.  I kid you not, I placed my forehead against the wall and thought that it would at least help me to forget about its grueling existence.  I guess though instead of elaborating on my thoughts of self-destruction brought on by this film, it is perhaps better to point out some of its flaws.  First off, the acting in this film is next to impossible not to hate.  Excluding, George Takei who is essentially playing himself and the minor scene involving Erice Stonestreet everybody else is clearly failing from a lack of acting direction, or even basic understanding of how to deliver a line for film.  Indeed there are moments when I could pick up Trishelle Cannatella actually staring vapidly at the screen, as though she were completely unaware that she needs to act when part of a scene.  It was not an acting choice in the slightest, but a clear misunderstanding of the presence of a camera, particularly inexcusable since she was a cast member on a show that help set a standard for how evasive the filmic image could be in one's personal life.  The second factor that became infuriating at a certain point was the editing between scenes, which involved combinations of events which had occurred in scenes prior, layering images of guns and strippers as if to remind viewers where the film had previously gone, a repetitive act that the editor attempts to make less so by the use of the most obvious of after effects possible, even incorporating a rotating cube, which, if I am not mistaken, might be the default option in Final Cut when you decide to incorporate such effects.  If the narrative were more well-formulated or not so short these unnecessary cut scenes would not have been a problem, but I am almost certain that if you cut out the amount of time spent on these moments, the film would clock in at below feature length, because it happens that much.  Finally, this is more of a frustration on the part of naming, because I included Ninja Cheerleaders in the list solely to fill a slot on the kung fu marathon, with what I though would be a wild bit of post-genre nonsense, but that was not the case.  Neither the act of cheerleader or ninjas really factor into the film.  Instead it is about how terrible community college is and a backwards attempt to consider the life of young women who choose to engage in exotic dancing.  Just in case you think that it works on any of these levels, let me assure you that it fail miserably on all accounts.

Key Scene:  The fleeting moment with Eric Stonestreet is worth watching, but he is also a great actor so that says little for the remainder of the film.

Do not watch this movie.  I will, undoubtedly, suffer for days from this experience and do not wish the same upon you.

Reconsidering My Cinematic Childhood: 3 Ninjas (1992)

Due to time, I am starting a new segment on the blog, what follows will be a bit of an explanation/diatribe of sorts.  In the case of this post it will still fall within the kung fu marathon:

As I become more familiar with my use and presence on Letterboxd, I am decided that making really quirky lists is proving to be a great way of wasting my seemingly minimal amount of free time, but since it requires little effort and far less dedication that writing out a blog post, I justify the act in that it is still allowing me to consider film, even if in a wildly joking manner.  For example, I have a running list of films in titled "movies that make the 80's look like the coolest and grossest place to live simultaneously" which considers a breadth of movies from the era that are wildly over-the-top, but highly engaging, including wonderfully terrible movies like Miami Connection and more well-established classics that are still kind of awful, such as Top Gun.  Another list has come to my mind as a result of this kung fu marathon, when I watched 3 Ninjas.  The title for this Letterboxd list will be something along the lines of "movies from my childhood that have not aged well," because 3 Ninjas is certainly a prime example of this dilemma.  My brother and I used to repeatedly watch this film and hope to obtain the, what we thought at the time were, kabuki masks worn by the brothers.  Revisiting it for this marathon, made it rather apparent that it not only failed to maintain even the slightest degree of nostalgia that I have obtained for movies that are far from perfect, a work like Space Jam being perhaps the best example.  3 Ninjas cannot even maintain the aforementioned nostalgia factor because the movie is both very dated and indeed not even well made.  It is clearly a work that was rushed through production, evident through sporadic editing and filming that make the presence of stunt doubles so blatant and a narrative with the flimsiest of character arcs and an understanding of fashion that extends to about a solid three months of 1992.

This segment will involve me attempting to reflect on what I might have picked up on as a child that would have made me adore this movie and then I will juxtapose it with the reality, or new opinion I might have formed with a more matured cultural palette, as well as a much broader awareness of the art of cinema, both in function and theory.  First, I seem to recall being really fond of the films presence of the Japanese grandfather, played by Victor Wong.  Something about his sagely presence seemed hip and desirable.  Now, I realize how exploitative the figure was, as well as how stereotypical the figure proved to be, particularly in contrast to the whiteness of the kids around him.  In fact, assuming that he was supposed to be their grandfather, the possibility of the three children having any amount of Asian heritage seems genetically unlikely, thus leading to another point of reconsideration as I look back on this film.  When I was younger, I am certain that some of my joy in this film came from its brevity.  Clocking in at under an hour and thirty minutes, the film is paced at a frantic speed, jumping between scenes inexplicably and incorporating characters, none of which seem to go anywhere.  I am aware that this could have been a result of the producers demanding the filmmaker cut away scenes to make it watchable, for children, like myself at the time, whose attention spans would have popped off by the hour thirty marker.  Yet, what they chose to keep makes as little sense at what is clearly missing, as though whoever did get tasked with editing was doing so out of spite.  For the third consideration, I will get a bit Freudian and admit that one of the elements that might have drawn me to the film was the tenuous relationship between the father and sons, of absence and indifference.  Thematically it is something that still strikes a cord with me when executed brilliantly, as is the case with Puffy Chair, or to a lesser degree in The Great Santini.  Here, however, it is just done with little concern for the psychological effects or the nature of such a distancing relationship on a family structure.  Like the rest of the film it is dealt with hastily and unconvincingly.

As you can tell by this revisitation, I am less than thrilled about this film.  While I do not foresee this being a super frequent variant on the regular blog postings, it is something that I hope to try here and there.  Inclusions in the future are likely to be films like Small Soldiers, Gordy and A Walk to Remember, which I reacted to with great enjoyment at a younger, pre-cinephile age that might not hold up with a more critical lens.  However, on this quest, I do hope to occasionally find a work that has become even more profound with age, unfortunately, that was not the case with 3 Ninjas.