This weekend, High School Musical 3: Senior Year made over $42 million at the box office, shattering the record for highest grossing movie musical ever and surprising absolutely NO ONE under the age of 15. Maybe it’s a generational thing, maybe we’ve missed the Disney Corporation’s subliminal mind rays that pulse out from every episode of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, or maybe it’s because most of us were born before 1980 (the horror!), but even the stunted man-boys at the MovieRetriever offices can’t really understand the appeal of the High School Musical franchise (and a lot of us were big-time theatre geeks back in the day).

The Hound called the first HSM a “bouncy musical with catchy tunes,” but, to be honest, he was just trying to impress his niece. The same goes for our “just as lively (if not as fresh)” review of High School 2 – all part of a ploy to make the Hound seem more appealing to the Disney demographic. (That jerk Pluto has been stealing the Hound’s thunder for YEARS.) So, when it came time to review High School Musical 3, we decided that the lying had to stop. We don’t understand the HSM movies and never will, so there’s no point in making our over-the-hill critics – and by “over the hill,” we mean, “old enough to drive” – sit through HS3, when we’re simply not the audience the movie is trying to reach.

Instead, to give the Zac Efron fans the accurate critical commentary they’re craving, we went searching for a reviewer directly from the High School Musical target demographic, figuring that his or her opinion would REALLY matter to HSM fans. Thankfully, we found Celine Leduc, age thirteen, who wrote us a review so great that, if child-labor laws weren’t so stringent, we’d lay off half our writers and make Celine our go-to critic for anything PG-13 and under.

And so, without further ado....

Celine Leduc’s High School Musical 3: Senior Year Review:

"The movie was so cheesy I could've made nachos. I would highly recommend it for the preteens. The 8 year-old seemed to enjoy it in the back row - singing all the words to the song and dancing to the last song. It seemed short to me. It was a good movie overall. I would give it 2 bones. Even though Zac Efron was looking fine. My friend and I were rolling our eyes the entire time. The lip-synching was off a little, when they were dancing and singing. It was appropriate and cute. You have to see it for yourself though!"

Rating: TWO BONES (Thanks again, Celine!)

Release Date: October 24th, 2008

Rating: G

Starring: Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel, Corbin Bleu, and Monique Coleman

Director: Kenny Ortega

Writer: Peter Barsocchini

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