High School Musical

High School Musical is a Disney Channel Original Movie with choreography by Kenny Ortega, Charles Klapow, and Bonnie Story. A musical, the film tells the story of two high school students, Troy, who is the captain of his school's basketball team and Gabriella, a shy star student. Together, they try out for the lead parts in their school musical. Despite some students' attempts to thwart their dreams, Troy and Gabriella persist and inspire others along the way.

Plot

Troy and Gabriella, without knowing each other, both go to a 'young adults' New Year's Party, while on vacation. They both get chosen for karaoke and "rock the house." Afterwards, Troy and Gabriella introduce themselves to each other, and then part company, but not before promising to call each other later (each having the other's number and picture on their cell phone).

Later, due to her mother's job being transferred to Albuquerque, New Mexico, Gabriella starts school at East High, not knowing that Troy also attends. Troy is also the captain of the East High Wildcats basketball team, which is coached by Mr. Bolton, Troy's father.

Welcoming the students back from their holiday vacation, Ms. Darbus, their homeroom teacher, encourages the students to sign up for the Winter Musical auditions, announcing that there would be singles auditions for the supporting roles and pairs auditions for the two leads. After class, Troy finds Gabriella after seeing her in class. It soon becomes evident that the two (and particularly Troy) both wish to sign up or, at least, that the other will do so first.

However, Troy sneaks out of doing Basketball practice during free period, evading both his friend Chad, and his father, to go watch the auditions. As well, Gabriella shows up for the audition. Though late for auditioning, the two sing a song from the musical, and get the callbacks for the musical.

The problem is that the singing (and being together) go against Troy and Gabriella's set stereotypes. Gabriella is a super-braniac, and Troy is the star basketball player. Troy gets in trouble with his dad and his friends when he directs his attention towards the musical instead of basketball, especially since the Wild Cats are gearing up for their big game in two weeks. Also, the scholastic decathlon team begins begging for Gabriella to focus on their upcoming competition. While being in a new school gives Gabriella the chance to start over before anyone can officially label her as math geek, Troy struggles to get his dad to accept him singing in the musical.

Not only this, the dynamic duo Ryan and Sharpay Evans, who have always been in the school musicals, are enraged. Sharpay and Ryan refuse to have any competition, and do what they can to stop Troy and Gabriella from stealing 'their' parts and 'their' show. Ryan, Sharpay, the Decathlon team and the basketball team get together to try and split them up. Troy then is confronted in the locker room with the entire basketball team and breaks down, telling them that he doesn't want to do the callbacks, not knowing that the whole event is being streamed to Gabriella in a different room.

But Troy finally manages to encourage Gabriella to singing with him at the callbacks, and finally she agrees.

But meanwhile, Ryan and Sharpay, as co-presidents of the Drama Club, had convinced Ms. Darbus to reschedule the auditions to the same time as the Big Game and the Scholastic Decathlon, and Ms. Darbus unknowingly changes it. But between the Basketball Team and the Decathlon team, a plan is cooked up so that Troy and Gabriella will still be able to get to the auditions.

And it comes together with one crazy day - the callbacks, the basketball game, and the scholastic decathlon. Gabriella and her team compete in the Scholastic Decathlon. During their competition they send a virus to the gym computer, which responds by causing the gym's lights and scoreboard to continuously turn on and off. Because of this, the game is halted and everyone is asked to make an orderly exit out of the gym, due to it being unsafe. The Decathlon team also send a virus to one of pieces of lab equipment to cause a chemical experiment to go bad, and release a pungent gas, forcing the competition to be delayed. At this point both Troy and Gabriella are running to the callbacks.

Meanwhile Sharpay and Ryan have just finished performing their song, "Bop To The Top" with only 4 or 5 people in the audience. Mrs. Darbus calls for Troy and Gabriella but unfortunately, they are not there yet. A couple of minutes later, they arrive but Mrs. Darbus says they are too late. However, the Basketball and Decathlon teams had been following not far behind Troy and Gabriella and entered the auditorium to watch Troy and Gabriella , and Mrs. Darbus is forced to let them sing (it isn't so much pressure from an auditorium full of people that force her, its the excellent display of "showbiz" and the determination of Troy, Kelsi & Gabriella). At first, Gabriella gets stage fright, but Troy reminds her to be who she wants to be. They manage the song "Breaking Free" which leaves the crowd and Mrs. Darbus cheering uncontrollably. Even Troy's dad and Gabriella's mom were there to watch. Soon, everyone realizes that Troy and Gabriella were meant to sing together.

After this, we see the Wild Cats playing again in the gym, where the lights are working again, and the Wild Cats (with a game-winning shot from Troy) win the championship. While the Wild Cats are celebrating, Gabriella comes in and tells Troy that her team won the Decathlon. Filled with joy, Gabriella and Troy are just about to share a romantic kiss when they are interrupted by Chad. They are just about to try again, when Taylor interrupts them. After, Sharpay comes up to Gabriella to congratulate her, telling her to "break a leg," which scares Gabriella until Sharpay tells her that that means "good luck" in theatre lingo. Everyone realizes that people should be able to do what they're truly passionate about, and not just stay in the set stereotypes given to them by others. With this new philosophy, the whole school decides that they should support each other, singing and dancing to a rousing finale song, "We're All in This Together."

Characters

Troy Bolton

Troy Bolton is the Captain of the Wild Cats Basketball team. His father is the coach for the team. Troy has a great voice and is dedicated to his basketball playing and during the course of the movie develops a great interest and devotion to his singing also.

Gabriella Montez

Gabriella moved to New Mexico after Winter Break vacation, and only knows one person...Troy Bolton who she soon falls in love with. She is extremely smart although doesn't want to be labeled as the school's "freaky genius girl". She also has a great voice, although she gets tremendous stage fright. In the end, with a little help from Troy, she overcomes it.

Sharpay Evans

Sharpay is called the "Ice Queen." She is hooked on trying to get what she wants. Sharpay is also head of the drama club and seems to be somewhat jealous of Gabriella. At first, she seems to kind of like Troy, however, Zeke has a crush on her and Sharpay ends liking him at the end of HSM.

Ryan Evans

Ryan is mostly pushed to the side to let Sharpay into the picture. Ryan is not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.He can often be very ditzy at times and is the nicer of the two.Ryan also might like Kelsi.In the movie, no details about this character are revealed.

DVD

High School Musical was released on DVD on May 23 2006. The High School Musical Encore Edition DVD includes both original and sing-along versions.

The DVD broke sales records when .20 million copies of the DVD were sold in its first six days.

The original soundtrack of the movie is now available on iTunes for $9.99 as well as the full movie for the same price. The movie was available prior to the release of the DVD yet iTunes stopped selling the video a few months before the DVD release. Now it is back for sale.

Bonus features

Learning the Moves featurette led by director/choreographer Kenny Ortega (Bop to the Top)
Never-before-seen music video: "I Can't Take My Eyes off of You"
"We're All in This Together" music video
Behind-the-Scenes featurette

DVD chapters

Opening Credits
Opening Titles
Back East High
"Get your Head in the Game"
Try-Outs
"What I've Been Looking For" (Revised)
"Stick to the Status Quo"
A Private Converse
Interventions
The Truth Is Revealed
Working Together
"We're Breakin' Free"
"We're All in this Together"
Ending Credits
Ending Titles

Charting

Billboard also has Top DVD Sales which High School Musical has charted on.

U.S. Billboard Top DVD Sales
Week	01	02	03	04	05
Position	1	2	6	8	8

Soundtrack

Main article: High School Musical Soundtrack

The soundtrack was released on January 10 2006 and debuted at number 143 on the Billboard 200, selling 6,469 copies in its first week. In the album's third week, for the chart dated February 11 2006, it climbed to number ten, and has since risen to number one on the Billboard 200 twice (on March 1 and March 22) and had shipped 3.5 million copies. Out of those copies, more than 2.5 million copies have been sold by June 2006; it was certified triple platinum by the RIAA.

Trivia

On July 6, 2006, the movie was nominated for six Emmy Awards including Best Children's Program and Best Director for Kenny Ortega.
This is the Disney Channel's most successful original movie to date with 7.8 million viewers in its premiere broadcast.
The producers of High School Musical have stated that High School Musical is meant to be a three-part series. However, High School Musical has also been said to end up as a four to five part series; Vanessa Anne Hudgens confirmed, as well as Zac Efron and Ashley Tisdale.
Most of the film was shot at East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, but the story takes place in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The school's mascot was changed from the Leopard to the Wild Cat. Additional Utah locations include Murray High School for the auditorium scenes and Spanish Fork Canyon.
It has been noted that there are many similarities between the film and the 1978 film Grease. Some examples include the two protagonists meeting outside of school, and then discovering they go to the same school. Troy, like Grease's Danny, has to face a certain amount of harrassment from his male friends for wanting to be in a musical. Also, the final song "We're All In This Together" bears a striking resemblance to the final song in Grease: "We Go Together." Vanessa Anne Hudgens song, "When There Was Me and You" is also alike in many ways Olivia Newton John's song in Grease, "Hopelessly Devoted To You," where both girls sing slow tempo songs alone. Stick to the Status Quo also bares a resemblance to songs in musicals such as "Hair" and "Rent".
Austin High School of Austin Texas,home of the nationally known Red Dragon Players theatre program was chosen by Music Theatre International and the Walt Disney Corporation to premiere the stage version of High School Musical.
Gabriella is from San Diego. When Sharpay prints out an article about her you can see the name of the newspaper "The San Diego Post".

Errors

When Troy and Gabriella are singing Start of Something New, in one shot, Troy is holding the Microphone in his hands, in the next shot, the microphone is on the stand. You barely see Troy starting to put the microphone down, so it looks like a continuity error.

You could pick up on occasion on the fact that the songs had been pre-recorded. There are a few errors such as in the scene with Gabriella singing 'When There Was Me and You' where the sound was not quite correctly synced, or in the callback scene, where Troy keeps moving the microphone in and out, yet the singing level stayed constant.

When Gabriella tells Troy she needs to go find her mom and wish her a Happy New Year, she leaves the camera screen with some party strings attached to her. She pulls some party hats and more string off the table. But as soon as she leaves the screen, the string isn't pulling as she stopped moving.

Near the end of the song, 'Stick to the Status Quo', Gabriella circles the closest table near the stairs. It is evident that there is no milk carton in the medium shot, however when she slips, a close up of the milk carton is shown then the milk carton disappears again, as her food flies off from her tray. It has been questioned as to whether the milk carton was knocked during the dancing and then cleaned up after the slip, because we don't see the floor again till Troy enters the cafeteria.

When Ms. Darbus talks to Coach Bolton, his sandwich goes from in his hand to the desk to his hand, and so on. Also, the sandwich grows and shrinks a few times.

During the intervention when Troy announces, “Gabriella is not important” via webcam, we can see a navigation panel showing rewind, stop and fast forward. If it was streamed via webcam (as depicted), then they wouldn’t be there. However it does say in the lower left-hand corner 'Wi-Fi Streaming'

During the sequence when Troy is heading to the first audition, his shoes switch between blue shoes with white accents and white shoes with blue accents.

During the sequence when Troy and Gabriella are practicing "Breaking Free," Sharpay walks into the girl's bathroom because she heard singing. She walks around and kicks open a few bathroom stalls, apparently looking for Gabriella. When she doesn't find her she turns around, looks at herself in the mirror, and walks out. Then it is revealed that Gabriella was sitting behind a part of the wall in the bathroom where she would be extremely visible to Sharpay, however, Sharpay walked right past her not noticing a thing while Gabriella was in plain sight. It has been suggested that Sharpay was looking toward the stalls, not at the mirrors.

At the beginning of 'Breaking Free', Troy stops Kelsi from playing, because Gabriella wasn't singing, then when she starts over, Troy sings the first line, "We're soaring." However throughout the rest of the song Gabriella is the one who sings this line, so Troy may have sung Gabriella's line to help her beat her stage fright.

External Links

Official website

High School Musical Series
High School Musical > High School Musical 2

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