After meeting in detention, five teenage stereotypes form a band.

CRITIQUE

I’m forty years old. I’m male. I’m a hopeless cynic. My CD collection starts with AC/DC’s High Voltage and ends with the soundtrack to Zabriskie Point. I went into a funk the day Joey Ramone died. My favorite band is Pink Floyd. My favorite album is Wish You Were Here. My favorite song is “Comfortably Numb.” Why am I telling you this? In order to let you know that I am not the person to be reviewing this movie.

I’m about as qualified to review a Disney Channel flick about a multi-ethnic group of high school freshmen who form a band and sing sunny pop tunes as I am to perform brain surgery. When it comes to this movie, my opinion, to borrow a line from John Cougar Mellencamp, means nothin’.

Nevertheless, I’m going to give you my opinion, and I promise to try to be as objective as possible. That’s not going to be easy, though, seeing as how the guitarist is a chick and there’s a dude (a lisping ginger who also raps) who plays keytar, but I’m still going to try.

Pardon the crudity, but this movie is a little like a weighted speculum: neither was made with me in mind, but knowing that doesn’t make being subjected to either one any easier to take. I hated every minute of this thing. I even hated the moments so awful they made me laugh so hard I almost cried.

The characters are so thinly sketched they barely rise to the level of stereotypes. One kid doesn’t like his young stepmother. Another is tired of being compared to his older brother. One’s daddy isn’t around. The Asian American one feels unloved because she’s not a genius. (She’s also a rebel, which means she’s a vegan and wears those “Question Authority” T-shirts you can buy at Target.) The Indian one thinks her father is too strict. Other than that, they’re completely interchangeable.

And despite the fact that they’re all supposed to be social misfits, they’ve been cast with the usual exacting Disney eye, meaning they’re intended to have as broad an appeal as possible, and therefore look like the sort of kids who wouldn’t have any trouble at all fitting in, which pretty much negates the point the story’s trying to make. (The movie is based on a book by Mark Peter Hughes, and all indications are the book’s nowhere near as homogenized. If the movie’s popularity leads to increased sales of the book, I guess it’ll be something of a Pyrrhic victory.)    

I hate it when characters in a movie are meant to be performing live but are obviously miming along to music that was recorded in a studio and then polished to slick perfection. So you can imagine my horror here, where not only is every performance the result of endless recording and mixing, but all of the vocals have been processed in one way or another. Or maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe these kids are so gifted they can magically make an unprocessed acoustic guitar sound like an electric guitar, bash on a hi-hat so much it suddenly begins to emit sounds reminiscent of a drum machine, or use their golden pipes to double-track their own vocals or even replicate the (ugh) Auto-Tune effect, and can do it all with only one combo amp. It’s entirely possible, because the movie also portrays them as being able to create a slick, overproduced, written-and-performed-by-committee pop tune within five minutes of first meeting.

The drummer starts rapping his fingers on a desk, the bassist dusts off an old upright bass, the guitarist picks up an old acoustic guitar, the ginger kid hops on an ancient upright piano, and the singer starts improvising. They run through the tune on their first try, somehow working out the arrangement through telepathy, and the others somehow are able to anticipate the lyrics, as they harmonize with the lead singer at appropriate spots. These kids are amazing!

I can’t imagine a time when I possibly could have enjoyed this. It’s so squarely aimed at tween and pre-tween girls that I never would have voluntarily watched it, even back when I wasn’t a jaded cynic. The moment the singing started would have killed it for me.

And had I been forced to watch it, it wouldn’t have been the bad acting, terrible songs, cliché plotting, lame conflicts, or pat resolution that bothered me. Nor would I have cared that this plays like a very long version of one of those Zack Attack-centric episodes of Saved by the Bell (complete with high school principal who never seems to do any real work). No, I simply would have hated it for what it is, whereas now I hate it for how it is.

There’s a good message somewhere within, but it’s buried under an avalanche of commercial calculation. This is a product, meant to move copies of the soundtrack, turn its stars into moneymaking cogs in the Disney machine (the studio desperately needs one, especially now that Demi Lovato has gone round the bend), and hopefully kick off a new franchise.

But like I said, my opinion doesn’t matter. A certain segment of the population is going to devour this, not caring what anyone else thinks, and heaven help anyone who tries to get in their way.

THE VIDEO

The 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer is nothing special. This looks like your typical no-frills made-for-TV fare, with colors that don’t have any sort of pop and a lighting scheme that makes everything look a little flat and blah. Moiré and jitter are quite noticeable.

Again, though, the audience sitting down for this won’t notice or care about such things, and it looks like this was taken into consideration; the sub-par presentation isn’t excusable, but it’s certainly not unexpected. There’s a lot of space left over on the disc (nearly a third), and I think utilizing more of that space would have alleviated at least some of the transfer’s problems.

THE AUDIO

Audio comes in the form of a Dolby Digital 5.1 track. The audio is really straightforward stereo for much of the movie, only spreading to the rears whenever a song is performed. The songs are the obvious focus when it comes to the audio, as they offer the only real signs of life; they may be awful, but some thought went into their presentation. Everything else is a bit bland.

French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included; English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

Why what’s been dubbed an exclusive extended music scene (5 minutes) is included as an extra is beyond me, as it’s also been added to the movie as a post-credits scene (hence this release’s “Extended Edition” label).

The Rock-Along Mode displays the lyrics whenever a song is being performed, providing viewers the perfect opportunity to sing along.  

A second disc houses a digital copy.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It’s High School Musical by way of The Breakfast Club. Or it’s a sort of inverse version of School of Rock, only minus everything that made that movie so surprisingly good. If you’re old enough to understand what either of those statements means, this movie’s not for you.