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.

There You Are, Right Back In The Jungle Again: Duel (1971)

While I am quite aware that there are a ton of films I still need to catch up within regards to the "most important" works of cinema, both American and foreign, it is quite nice to be at a point in my film consumption that I am able to dig deeper and find lesser known gems for viewing experience, especially the discoveries of lesser known works by well-established directors, particularly those of Steven Spielberg.  In the past few decades Spielberg has all but made himself the face of American filmmaking by creating gripping narratives that often double as fully realized blockbusters.  Now it is also worth acknowledging the particularly troublesome notion of films being Spielbergian which seems to account as being both negative and positive simultaneously, granting that his use of orchestra heavy John Williams scores and sweeping camera work cause very real emotive responses within their viewers, while also arguing that this highly-stylized execution on the part of Spielberg is in some ways hokey or hammed-up for effect.  While there is a degree of validity to this argument, it is quite necessary to remember that these descriptors account for a specific set of films by the director, whose cannon is almost inconceivably expansive.  The epic nature of his films often only hold true for those that are in their very nature fantastical, whether it be Jurassic Park or the Indiana Jones films.  Indeed, if one were to revisit something like Jaws or Schlinder's List it becomes rather obvious that the over-the-top nature of the auteur only emerges when it is begged from the narrative.  To solidly entrench this argument I offer what may well be the biggest hidden gem in Spielberg's oeuvre, his 1971 television movie Duel, which exists within the world of implausibility and intensity, while also managing not to be an entirely showy or melodramatically over-abundant film.  Indeed, I would even contest that this film is a highly internal work that focuses on the experiences of a singular man in relation to a terrible encounter that invariably leads to his fracturing from insanity, the acting is surprisingly minimal given the movies concept and the music is decidedly diagetic.  Perhaps it was the fact that the film was made-for-tv that resulted in Spielberg reigning in his showy ways, but one thing is for certain, it shows a varied cinematic output by one of film's most identifiable directors and the result is quite excellent.


Duel is a decidedly enclosed narrative, focusing nearly entirely on the experiences of David Mann (Dennis Weaver) a non-descript business man who is taking a semi-lengthy trip for a meeting with somebody a couple of hours from his home.  With only the absurd discussions of talk radio to accompany him he heads about his way, hoping to make great time an endeavor that leads to him passing a slowly moving freight truck with little or no thought.  However, immediately after this decision, it becomes clear that the unseen trucker is quite infuriated with David for his act and begins bullying the much smaller car by passing him on the narrow road and blocking him from moving any further.  An irate David pulls into a gas station to seek respite and  calls his wife to apologize for some vague event involving a sexually demeaning advance by another man at a part, an act for which David apparently stood by indifferently.  David clearly hopes that this brief pause will afford him escape from the encroachment of the maniacal truck, although it becomes quite obvious upon return to the road that the trucker's vendetta is far from over.   What follows is a highly intense game of cat and mouse between David and the truck driver, wherein David constantly attempts to take advantage of his much smaller size and speed to take side roads and the like, even going so far as to break at a local diner in order to approach the truck driver in person, yet in the decidedly elusive nature of the driver, David ends up showing face and ultimately gets kicked out of the restaurant for starting altercations with the customers.  All the while, David is continually chased by the trucker who shows no hesitation in destroying all that is in his path in order to teach David a lesson.  When David attempts to seek solace by helping a group of children and their bus driver get back on the road it is only another point of failure as he is again attacked by the truck driver who chases David off and immediately aids the children in their getting back on the road, verifying that the driver's wild behavior is entirely intended for David.  Ultimately, the chase leads to a dead end of sorts and a showdown occurs between the much smaller vehicle David is driving and the truck, but in a last minute move of genius that plays upon the rampage of the truck driver, David is able to get the truck to drive off of a cliff, thus, assumedly, killing the driver in the process.  Yet given his ultimate escape, David does not immediately return home, instead he sits dazed by the events and simply tosses rocks in to the wreckage in the canyon below.

The tossing of the rocks pretty much entrenches the films clear narrative influence which, while pulled from a short story, clearly borrows heavily from the biblical tale of David and Goliath, both in the chucking of rocks at a figurative slain beast, as well as the title character's all to obvious name.  However, David's last name is Mann, which helps to conceptualize the second layer of Spielberg's Duel, which clearly seems to deal with the issues of failed masculinity and the misguided attempts to reassert one's masculine loss a theme that is present to varying degrees within other works by Spielberg, particularly Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but seems to be most blatant and wild within the context of this film.  Between the failed ability to assert himself in an awkward situation the day before, as evidenced by his brief conversation with his wife and his recounting of his experiences in what viewers can assume to be the Vietnam War, David has assumedly lost all sense of self-worth, even going so far as to silently relate to a man who bemoans feeling as though he is not the head of his household, while he is quick to laugh off another man who is concerned with whether or not his filling out of the census will result in his home being invaded.  With this in mind, one is better able to understand the frustrations that come to a boil, leading to David's initial passing of the truck, it is half out of a need to speed up his travel time and as passive condemnation of the truck for interfering with his ability to escape his lack.  Yet, when the truck driver quickly puts David into check, what unfolds is a series of missteps and failures to verify his own masculinity some taking very physical form, whether it be his cowering in fear when his verbal threats fail at the diner, or his own attempt to exert a "perfect male sense of direction" to elude the truck driver.  David runs the gamut of attempts to be a man only to find that in this scenario those assumedly male advantage  are both useless but, arguably irrelevant.  Metaphorically speaking, David is also reminded of his own failures as a male in the form of references to what might be his impotence, these realizations occur most noticeably at the aptly named Snake-o-rama gas station, as well as his failure to "perform" when he cannot push the phallic-like bus through the tunnel, a metaphor only heightened when David notices the truck waiting at the other end of the tunnel, suggesting that another phallic power already resides in his place, one that is sexually adept and bigger.  It is no coincidence that David's ultimate success comes in his avoiding a head on conflict with the truck driver, finding that butting phallic heads proved futile.  It is worth considering this in relation to some other Spielberg works, because I am quite confident that it is a metaphor that extends well through a series of his early works.

Key Scene:  The Snake-o-rama scene is wild and surprisingly elaborate for a television movie.

Quite a surprise for an early work and while Jaws is the definitive starting point for Spielberg, I would highly encourage checking this movie out because it is as thrilling as they come.

Being Normal Is Vastly Overrated: Halloweentown (1998)

I promised to give a vast study of horror films in my themed month for October and certainly intend to deliver on that promise, which helps to explain the next film on my tour, the 1998 Disney television movie Halloweentown, a pick by my girlfriend for the list and probably the biggest genre stretch on my list.  However, to say that it is a stretch is not an attempt to undermine the work in the slightest, there are moments in this film that I recall from my younger days as being genuinely scary and ones that could still be frightful to the right group of youngsters.  It was fun to revisit this film, as I only had fleeting memories of the plot and had no idea the film included the consummate Debbie Reynolds.  Of course the plot is a bit fractured, but one can expect such occurrences when, firstly the film is made for television and secondly it is directed towards a youth audience.  Many of the characters exist a plot devices and manage to have a very cursory place in the brief movie, only clocking in at a bit over eighty minutes.  The plot it does possess though is well-executed and contains some moments of comedic brilliance as well as a few genuine scares, all culminating in a great commentary on embracing ones uniqueness and accepting even against stalwart reasoning that some things are, in fact, magic.  Finally, the make-up and costuming in this film are stellar, particularly the various beasts and creatures shown throughout the film and one scene of exceptionally good stop motion animation.  It is probably going to be the only family friendly movie blogged about this month, and one of the few I have blogged about to date, but it is certainly a movie for persons of many age groups as its humor ranges from simple slapstick, to some clearly adult oriented humor.

The story in Halloweentown begins on Halloween, as should be little surprise as three kids look longingly at the festivities from inside their house.  The children include a young girl named Sophie (Emily Roeske), an incorrigible nerd named Dylan (Joey Zimmerman) and the oldest daughter and eccentric Marnie (Kimberly J. Brown).  Despite their constant pleas to partake in trick or treating, their mother Gwen, played by Judith Hoag (who is likely better known as April O'Neil in the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film), denies their request.  She feels adamantly that they will be somehow ruined by the events of such a day.  Viewers are uncertain as to her concerns, until it is realized with the entrance of their grandmother Aggie (Debbie Reynolds), that they are related to an ancient family of witches.  Despite Aggie's less than subtle hints at their unique nature, Gwen denies them the right to explore this alternative life, instead wishing for them to have a "normal" life, despite being without a father figure.  Upon overhearing her mother and grandmother argue about her right to be a witch, Marnie follows her grandmother to Halloweentown via a flying bus to another world, only to be joined by Dylan and Sophie who share an equal curiosity.  Upon landing the group attempts to find their grandmother, but not before running into Calabar (Robin Thomas) Halloweentown's mayor.  He aids them in transportation to their grandmother's house via a taxi ride from a wise cracking skeleton named Benny, voiced by Rino Romano.  It is at this point that the children discover that trouble is afoot in Halloweentown and their grandmother is attempting to stop its occurrence.  Followed hot on the tail by an irate Gwen, the children and grandmother end up in a theater where it is revealed that Calabar is behind the evil in the town, freezing all who disobey him.  In the process of confronting Calabar, Gwen and Aggie are frozen by a spell and the children are left to complete Aggie's spell, which requires obtaining ingredients such as the hair of a werewolf and the sweat of a ghost.  They succeed in doing so and finally get the means to confront Calabar, and with a little help from a town local the group beats him and everything is returned to normal, with a suggestion that the three children, despite their mother's original denial, will indeed be trained in the dark arts.

The movies commentary is rather simple, as it should be considering that it is essentially directed at children.  However, the lesson taught is a very important one, especially for young adults and children. Instead of simply being a horror/comedy family film, Halloweentown posits something much greater in its suggestion that one should embrace uniqueness even if certain groups in society claim it to be, in this case, demonic.  Gwen represents a troubled single mother who holds falsely onto an idea that somehow by denying her heritage and identity that her children will exist in a better world, when it is clear that her disconnect and denial are only bringing more questions up within her children and arguably raising them to be social outcasts, as an early reaction with some of Marnie's friends suggests.  Aggie, in a maternal, and somewhat ancestral sense, claims this heritage and struggles desperately to keep her grandchildren practicing long after her passing.  The film also embraces a feminist ideology in that many of the spells require a group of women to unite together to make it more powerful, made all the more pertinent in that these women are of different ages.  The brief film also tackles notions of beauty and friendship, as occurs between Marnie and Luke (Phillip Van Dyke) a "dashing" young boy in Halloweentown who takes a liking to Marine, only to betray her, in what viewers come to discover was a Devil's bargain with Calaber to make him look better.  Essentially, Halloweentown contains a series of life lessons for young viewers and even a few reminders to parents on embracing their familial identity and heritage, even if it is not the mainstream idea of normal.  If anything the film denies denial.

Key Scene:  The obtaining of ingredients montage is quite fun and probably the funniest moment in the film.

I want to tell everybody to go out and buy this film, but I know it is for only a select few, not to mention that it is unusually expensive for what it is and, furthermore, it seems to sell out quickly after being stocked, at least that is what happened repeatedly at the Target near my house.