"Documusical" review: High School Musical: The Music In You (Disney Channel)
01/18/08 01:34 PM
By ED BARK
Originally earmarked for last fall, Disney Channel's Fort Worth-based High School Musical: The Music In You finally arrives late and comes up short.
At just a half-hour in length, it only begins to tell the story of how the Arlington Heights and Western Hills high schools collaborated on a stage production of the cable channel's signature smash hit. Tons of perfectly usable footage must have crashed to the cutting room floor in this scant "documusical" from Oscar-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple (Harlan County, U.S.A.). It airs on Sunday, Jan. 20th at 7 p.m. (central), two years to the day of Disney's High School Musical premiere.
Most of the kids involved in the production get expelled from the final cut, which spends an undue amount of time on a would-be Troy Bolton who was dropped from the play after slacking off too much. He did find a new girlfriend among the sound crew, though. Kopple could have spared viewers some of those extracurricular details, but doesn't.
Ann Hunter and Julia Worthington, respectively the theatre arts directors at Arlington and Western Heights, are the maestros behind the joint effort. Hunter emerges as the star, with Worthington mostly depicted as her silent partner.
"You're sucking the life out of my show, 'cause you're not on it!" Hunter rails at the cast in general. But they sure do pull it all together in a hurry. Or at least that's the impression given by a film that never gets a chance to dig in and set its own stage.
It's not the kids' fault, of course. They apparently put on quite a series of shows in the end, even if we only see snippets. Perhaps this half-hour documentary will prepare them for various rejections down the road. In this case, the dream of seeing yourself on national TV is reserved for only a few. The rest are either barely glimpsed background furniture or missing all together.
Oh well, that's show biz, and maybe there'll be a greatly expanded "director's cut" available on DVD. On Disney Channel, though, brevity's the word and disappointment is the end result.
Grade: C-minus
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