‘High School Musical’ Walked So ‘High School Musical: The Musical: The Series’ Could Run

Fifteen years ago High School Musical blessed the world with a marvelous thing: it introduced an entire generation to the fabulously costumed, carefully choreographed, and always dramatic world of musical theater. Even if you thought the High School Musical phenomenon of the mid-aughts constituted a societal lapse in judgement, you weren’t immune to getting “Breaking Free” stuck in your head. Though High School Musical gave the world a dozen wonderful things, it’s time to admit its time in the spotlight has ended. Not only is High School Musical: The Musical: The Series an updated version of the franchise… It does High School Musical better than High School Musical ever did.

It’s difficult to overstate the success of the first High School Musical movie. Throughout the 2000s Disney released a long list of Disney Channel Original Movies, but none stuck it to the status quo like Troy and Gabriella’s star-crossed romance. The first installment in the trilogy became the most successful DCOM ever produced. Its soundtrack was so successful that it reached No. 1 in the United States. That success didn’t end with the first movie. High School Musical 3: Senior Year was the first ever DCOM movie to receive a theatrical release. That’s how confident Disney was about its High School Musical fanbase. It took a premiere from its largely forgettable stable of Disney Channel content and put real money behind it. That gamble paid off, too. Senior Year made an estimated $252 million worldwide against an $11 million budget.

But no matter how much fondness you have for the original movies, there’s one truth you can’t ignore. High School Musical: The Musical: The Series is simply better than its predecessor.

Let’s start with an element that everyone is familiar with: the music. Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel, and Corbin Bleu’s catchy songs are half the reason why High School Musical became such a sensation in the first place. All of them, from “Stick to the Status Quo” and “Bop to the Top” to “We’re All in This Together” and “Get’cha Head in the Game”, are designed to be earworms. And they excel at that mission. If you hear even one HSM song, chances are you’ll be humming the soundtrack for a week. But from a critical perspective, every one of these songs are safe.

During their big moments Efron and Hudgens are drowned in so much autotune, you can hardly hear their speaking voices. Any room for breath or reflective pausing is then masked in layers upon layers of synthetic, loud audio. At times it’s hard to even make out what the lyrics are. Not every star suffers from that fate. Tisdale’s iconic Sharpay-squeak can always be heard, but her biggest moments often feel either over-directed or over-produced. Tisdale is a good actress who can sell conniving high school hottie with a single glance. Yet time and time again Sharpay’s songs are elevated to levels of evil that are almost too ridiculous to be funny.

By contrast, HSM:TM:TS takes risks. Just watch this clip of Nini (Olivia Rodrigo) and Ricky (Joshua Bassett) performing “Breaking Free” on opening night:

When Rodrigo starts singing, it’s absolutely silent. That’s how confident this show is in Rodrigo’s musical ability. They know if they turn her loose, she’ll deliver even without a safety net. As “Breaking Free” continues it’s not a synth-soaked mix that accompanies Rodrigo and Josha Bassett’s Ricky but pianos, guitars, and violins. If you listen hard enough you can pinpoint just about every instrument used in this version. That intentional simplicity doesn’t merely highlight Rodrigo and Bassett’s talents. It compliments the simplistic message of the song. “Breaking Free” embodies the optimistic, vaguely juvenile hope that love can truly conquer anything.

That deeper understanding even translates into the show’s choreography. To use “Breaking Free” as an example again, Efron and Hudgens’ version of the song is almost embarrassing when it comes to dance. There are shaking shoulders that rarely match the beat and Hudgens’ twirls a truly insane number of times. There’s a distinctly DCOM sense of these two leads trying desperately to seem cool.

Nini and Ricky don’t have that problem, largely because nothing about their performance is cool. They lock arms and spin around together, something every kid has mastered while on the playground. When Nini sings “To get to that place to be all that we can be,” Ricky copies her singing of “be,” both mocking her and flirting with her in this brief moment. They truly feel like a young couple who only has eyes for each other. It’s that raw sincerity that paradoxically makes their performance so much cooler than anything from the original movie.

And then there’s Gina. As a whole, all the dancing in HSM:TM:TS is better than the vaguely robotic movements of the movies. Yet Sofia Wylie’s Gina is a dancing force to be reckoned with all on her own. Throughout the series Wylie pulls off elaborate, complicated steps with effortless grace. Gina’s solo in “Stick to the Status Quo” is one of the best examples of that:

Look at those hip swings! Those high kicks! Those twirls! That ground work! It’s immediately clear this young woman isn’t just another Disney kid in an endless line of them. She’s remarkably gifted, and she’s going somewhere. That’s the sense you get from most of HSM:TM:TS‘ leads. It’s also something that was never quite communicated in the original films despite those movies proclaiming how special its characters were every 10 minutes.

Not to be outdone, Joe Serafini deserves a round of applause his stunt-laden entrance as Sharpay Evans. Nailing your notes and hitting your marks is difficult on its own. Doing all that while being flung through the air by one of your costars is another challenge entirely.

Yet there’s one area where this series truly reigns supreme, where it doesn’t just dominate over its competition but dances across its legacy. High School Musical: The Musical: The Series knows drama. Once again, let’s turn it over to Gina. In this scene she meets Nini for the first time while they’re both auditioning for the role of Gabriella:

Of course those dance moves are ludicrously impressive for anyone, let alone a high schooler. But it’s the emotion of this scene that Wylie and Rodrigo nail above all else. You can feel Nini’s insecurity just as plainly as you feel Gina’s calm arrogance. These emotions may be elevated to fit Disney+’s wild Wildcats world, but it’s never exaggerated to the point of caricature. That’s a balance the series maintains episode after episode.

Also, the drama of this series is just juicier than the original movies. It’s not uncommon to watch these young actors channel the emotions of their High School Musical characters while piling their own complicated emotions on top of their performance. Take for example Nini and EJ’s (Matt Cornett) version of “What I’ve Been Looking For.” The song is supposed to be a sweet love ballad, but it’s being performed while the couple is in a fight. In between hitting their notes you can hear Nini’s underlying sarcasm and EJ’s painful grinning as he tries to keep his real emotions in check. Not only is the sarcastic love song one of the best tropes in all of musical theater, it’s handled delectably here. Musical fans love one thing above all else: drama. High School Musical: The Musical: The Series gets that, and it delivers.

Today on High School Musical‘s 15th birthday it’s nice to reflect on what this franchise gave the world. It gifted us Zac Efron and made a generic Wildcat mascot an inside joke was can all enjoy. But more than anything else High School Musical offered a hand to all the ambitious, sheltered, scared, wannabe theater kids out there. For a brief moment it convinced the world that musicals are cool. High School Musical may have set that stage, but HSM:TM:TS delivers on that promise. Bet on it.

Watch High School Musical: The Musical: The Series on Disney+