If only our high school years resembled what director Kenny Ortega succeeded in beautifully recreating in his last "High School Musical 3: Senior Year." And his story that has thus ended its third chapter has all the chances to eventually become a true cultural phenomenon among teenagers. Moreover, "High School Musical" has been a pop sensation since 2006 when the first movie aired on the Disney Channel. But this third part of the story is the first to be released on the big screen.

The action takes place during their senior year when our protagonists are faced with graduation, college, and most importantly, the prom. The cast is made up of Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Corbin Bleu and Monique Coleman.

The most annoying thing about this film however is the fact that it makes every single thing related to the final high school year seem too crucial for the rest of one’s life. And this has been done in so many other films already. But despite this apparently not very deep content, the wrapping is indeed impressing.

The attractive package is first of all embodied by Zac Efron, 21, who had his breakthrough with 2006's "High School Musical." He proved he could transfer his talent to another setting in 2007's "Hairspray" and will have a chance to show his dramatic range in director Richard Linklater's "Me and Orson Welles." This somehow proves that his teenage dilemmas are about to come to an end. Here, he plays Troy Bolton, basketball captain, drama club star and all-around good guy of East High. It's a sickeningly sweet part, yet Efron, like Dramamine, keeps nausea at bearable limits.  

Efron's sweetheart Hudgens, in the film and real life, isn't far. She is definitely responsible for the male fans of the series.
So apart from their regular activities, they decide to make one last show. Therefore the musical-within-the-musical allows director Kenny Ortega to do some interesting things with the picture's structure. Rehearsal scenes segue back into the "real" moment they are based on and vice versa, so that the movie is a revolving door of actual location shots, scenes within the school's theater and full-blown soundstage production numbers. The fact that it lacks realism isn’t that disturbing after all.

Most of "High School Musical 3" revolves around the choices Troy must make in the face of graduation. Though his father and coach (Bart Johnson) has arranged for him to play basketball at his own alma mater, Troy also has the possibility of winning a drama scholarship to Juilliard. But drama club composer Kelsi Nielsen (Olesya Rulin), prima donna Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale) and her choreographer brother Ryan (Lucas Grabeel) are all competing for that scholarship as well. The drama club's spring musical, an original production that recreates events from the club members' senior year, will essentially be their audition.

The film basically tells us that children and adolescents may be what they want to be, as long as the result of their efforts is, in one form or another, of absolute greatness due to their young ambition. That’s why, in many respects, "High School Musical 3" is incredibly naive.