A Surprising Gift from Hell...cats

During my blog hiatus, I got hooked onto a new brand of CW branded crack, right after I kicked my Gossip Girl addiction, unfortunately. But that crack, was the cheerleading themed soap Hellcats. Like One Tree Hill before it, it seduced me with promises of being something vaguely different. It seemed like it was going to be like the original Bring it On movie, but a show. It quickly spiraled into a standard "anything can and will happen to these people but they'll all rally around something innane to get through these nutso situations," kind of show. Just like One Tree Hill, actually.

But really, what I'm grateful to Hellcats for doing is giving us the character of Savannah, played by Ashley Tisdale. First of all, I've always felt that Ashley was kind of underrated. Yes, I did used to refer to her as "That blonde from Zach and Cody with the unfortunate nose." But now she's a brunette and got a nose job, and now that she's dealing with slightly more grown up material, she's doing really well. I'm glad to see it. But it's not just Ashley's bloom that makes me happy about Savannah.

Savannah is a devout Christian, and it's a key part of her character. She's saving sex for marriage, puts her trust in God, and oh, did I mention she's not considered, crazy, weird, preachy or stupid. She's the captain of the Hellcats cheerleading squad, on a scholarship to college, was dating a nice guy, goes to parties and is a normal and functioning human being.

As someone who considers her faith paramount to her identity, and gets increasingly frustrated at how people of faith, particularly women of faith, are portrayed, usually as one of two categories, idiots and hypocrites and they're all shrewish and overly opinionated and set to convert the world. But Hellcats is giving us neither, they're giving us a fully fleshed out character, or as fully fleshed out as anyone on The CW is. Last night's episode cemented it. Because as the rest of the squad whined about how they were going to lose everything when Marty revealed that football star Jake robbed a pharmacy and framed her law professor's client causing him to be convicted of his "third strike" and put in maximum security prison for like ever or something. (See, I told you anything and everything!) Savannah insisted that whatever happened was God's plan and then got on her knees to ask Him for guidance, in the privacy of her dorm room, without pushing this element on any of the other Hellcats. It's too bad that not that many people are watching.

A disappointment

So yesterday I trekked down to the mall and shelled out 21 bucks for the frills free (No special features) HSM 3 DVD. Let me tell you something: I don't think I've ever been more disappointed in a movie. That's not to say I haven't seen worse...there's definitely worse out there, I mean I've never been so disappointed...and for those of you that were with me that night, that includes Spider Man 3.

I love the concepts behind the High School Musical series, and actually the entire tween entertainment industry that has boomed in the past 5 years. I think clean wholesome, but still quality entertainment is really hard to do and I really believe that with maybe not its current but at least its recent lineup Disney Channel has captured it, the way Nickelodeon did when I was a kid. That being said, the HSM actual movies have just gotten progressively worse.

Now, HSM 3 technically is flawless...really, the choreography and direction are great, the performances are about what you expect, I'll get to that later. But there is no heart. The first HSM had heart by crap load. Heart was really the only thing to recomend it as something special. The second one had less heart but it was still something small, something beautiful. This movie is bigger than itself, bigger than its cast, and definitely bigger than its heart.

Borrowing plot elements from One Tree Hill, Troy agonizes over whether to take a basketball scholarship to please his father and the expectations of those around him, while Gabriela prepares to go off to Stanford...I'm serious, I think that some of the lines the pair speak when discussing their future were actually spoken first by Nathan and Haley. The Zefron is very cute, and I think he's more talented than he gets credit for (Hairspray people, watch it, love it, embrace it, the kid is good.) but agnst does not wear well on that face. Vanessa Hudgens is really nothing special. She was cute in the first one, bordering on good in the second and in the third she practically speaking disappears. I honestly have no memory of her performance, good or bad, she left no impression.

Lucas Grabeel was once again neglected and I still think he's the most talented of the HSM bunch, my God, the boy can dance. His fosse tribute in "I want it all" is pretty unreal. They also disrupted the artistic integrity of Ryan's character by throwing in a crush on Kelsi the piano player. One of my favorite elements of the series was that the reason Ryan didn't end up with a girl was because he was gay but because it was DCOM they couldn't say that. It kind of bums me out that that's gone.

Ashley Tisdale and her new nose are fine. Sharpay has become a characature of herself though. There was something very real about that character in the first movie. Well, I know what it was, she was the musical theater divas that I had spent so much of my time with in high school. By 3 she's become more of a joke than anything else. Although the Sharpay/Ryan number "I want it all" is one of the highlights of the whole thing.

But the real statue for rising above the little they've been given goes to Corbin Bleu. Like Grabeel, he was pretty overlooked in the first movie, given his chance to shine in the second and steals the show here in the third. The number "The Boys are Back" with him and Efron is the absolute best in the whole movie. And he actually manages to like act or something. The scene where Troy reveals that he and Chad will not in fact be playing college basketball together, its in Bleu's eyes how hurt he is at his bff's abandonement.

The smaller characters are great. Zeke, Martha, Kelsi, Taylor, Jason, they're all there and fabulous as they've been throughout, and we wouldn't mind seeing more of them. The seeds planted for a possible HSM 4 are very there...three freshmen, a british bitch who worships Sharpay a la the Blair Waldorf drones, and two basketball kids who want to be Troy and Chad show up and release a new energy into the movie.

The grownups are also good. Ms. Darbus becomes an actual human as she reminds Troy that he is talented and looks at home on a stage. Coach Bolton dispenses his good dad but misguided advice well, and Mrs. Montez smiles and says "Gabby" just perfectly. Oh and the random Asian principal is back.

All in all, its not horrible by any means, I just think that HSM belongs on the small screen (I didn't see it in theaters) But I suppose the time has come for me to set aside childish things...then again maybe it just wasn't very good. Either way, Troy's graduation speech, (Here's a question, why does the captain of the basketball team get to make a speech at graduation? Not like, the valedictorian, aka probably Taylor or Gabriela? I mean, no school is that obsessed with sports!) Anyway, it was a nice little goodbye to East High, but my HSM fever cooled a couple years ago.