‘High School Musical 3’ renews youth musicals

The movie musical has undergone a big revival in the past five years. When the big-screen adaptation of “Chicago” won the Oscar for best picture in 2003, it set the stage for “Dreamgirls,” “Hairspray” and “Mamma Mia!” to make a lot of money.

Yet one form of the genre hasn’t been much seen since the 1960s - the live-action musical for children.

Today, in fact, probably marks the first time a much-anticipated all-ages musical has hit the big screen since 1982, when “Annie” sang her way into our hearts. “High School Musical 3: Senior Year” is the third installment of the wildly popular Disney franchise, but it’s the first “HSM” film to premiere in theaters.

That might just be why the series is so successful. Disney has spent years cultivating its brand, and others in the genre, through alternative channels of distribution. Instead of making its way from stage to screen, “High School Musical” made its way from small screen to stage to big screen.

The last big movie musicals aimed at children, excepting that little redheaded orphan, were 1964’s “Mary Poppins” and 1968’s “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” It’s not that children aren’t interested in the genre. “I think that young people - like all people - have a visceral response to music, and when music is combined with a story that engages them and characters that they relate to, it is a perfect match,” says Anita Maynard-Losh, director of community engagement at the District’s Arena Stage.

Elizabeth Kann, New York Times best-selling co-author of “Pinkalicious,” the book and the musical, agrees. Noting that she loved seeing “Annie” as a child, she says, “I still hum ’Tomorrow, tomorrow.’ ”

Her musical, a charming and singable story about a little girl who turns pink after eating a few too many cupcakes, has been playing in New York and on tour.

“You should see the excitement at the theater,” she says. “Even the dads come dressed in pink.”

Yet the only major all-ages musicals to hit the big screen - such as “The Lion King” - have been cartoons, and most featured animals, not real people. Disney was “brilliant” in noticing the vacuum and moving in to fill it, says Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.

“Disney took a leaf from the book of Nickelodeon, which is making shows aimed at a preteen market but that were tolerable to the older siblings and, indeed, the parents,” he says. “Most little kids like to think of themselves as big boys or big girls. No self-respecting eight-year-old will admit to liking Mr. Rogers.”

In fact, although “High School Musical” has the reputation of being wholesome family entertainment, there are hints of rather adultlike drama in the plotlines that revolve around the central romance of Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) and Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens). Miss Hudgens shows rather a lot of cleavage in “HSM3,” while co-star Ashley Tisdale has one big dance number in which she’s wearing a leotard just like those you see on Vegas showgirls.

“High School Musical” is just one of a number of music-themed brands featuring teenage stars but aimed at the preteen set.

Like “HSM,” Miley Cyrus’ “Hannah Montana” started out on the small screen and then morphed into a concert tour and movie. “Camp Rock,” featuring the Jonas Brothers, looks set to follow.

With “High School Musical” 1 and 2, “just four hours of material has become … a lifestyle,” Mr. Thompson says. He has seen “High School Musical: The Ice Tour” and notes that Syracuse, with just a quarter of a million people, had three separate productions of “HSM” playing on local stages at one time.

“Everything now is multiplatformed,” he says. Still, the success of “HSM” is special: “Part of that is, there’s not a lot of competition.”

That’s likely to change, thanks to the anticipated success of “High School Musical 3.” By Tuesday night, it had already entered MovieTickets.com’s all-time Top 20 presale list. From Monday through Wednesday, 85 percent of the site’s ticket sales were for “HSM3.” Box-office prognosticators expect it easily to surpass $35 million when it opens this weekend. Imitators are likely to be legion in the copy-cat business culture of Hollywood.

Is this a genre, like the traditional movie musical, that has staying power? Mr. Thompson thinks the huge success of “HSM” proves it. Although the cast graduates high school in this third installment, he sees it continuing with the freshmen cast in the new film. “They could easily do these things in three-year trilogies from here until eternity.”

What set classics such as “Mary Poppins” apart was that the whole family could sit down and watch them. “HSM” has tapped into that formula. It’s hip and wholesome at the same time, with hot stars but chaste story lines. Adults and children can enjoy them together. “That doesn’t happen much anymore,” Mr. Thompson says. “That’s a calculus that is going to make money hand over fist.”

Here in the District, Arena Stage is opening a new musical called “Next to Normal” in early December, with previews starting next month. It’s another musical to which young people can easily relate. “While it is nothing like ’HSM,’ it does have a terrific rock musical score and some important high school age characters,” Ms. Maynard-Losh says.

She says musical theater has become very popular among the 8- to 15-year-olds who attend the summer Camp Arena Stage. “We offer choices of classes in visual art, music, dance and media as well as theater - but within the 65 choices that campers could pick from, eight of them were related in some way to musical theater - far and away the most within a specific genre,” she says. “In fact, we are considering adding a session for high schoolers who are interested in intensive work focused solely on musical theater in order to respond to the demand.”

Art thus imitates life: The plot of “High School Musical” follows a jock who struggles with his love for the uncool activity of musical theater. It seems that musical theater for the young just became cool again.