"High School Musical" - DVD

Cute show - not terribly memorable by my taste, but I can see why people like it. The trademark Disney approach of using appealing people energetically doing fun stuff - the Cheetah Girls, for example - is used to great effect here.

There are a few funny lines, such as:

Man, that music isn't hip-hop, okay, or rock, or anything essential to culture. It's show music. It's all costumes and makeup... oh, dude, it's frightening.

Nevertheless, there aren't as many funny lines as there could have been, a testament to clumsy writing, a feature not only of new Disney, but old Disney too, from way, way back. Not as funny as 'Clueless', but it's got great dancing.

Actually what got my attention was the location of the story - Albuquerque! For Disney to set a full-length movie musical in my home city is something completely unexpected, like the time I returned to Corrales (just outside Albuquerque) and discovered people had built a trotting track for llamas. I'm overjoyed with the extra effort, but what could they possibly have been thinking? Too bad the home high school is "East High": all the cool people live on the west side of town in Albuquerque (I'm from West Mesa High School, Class of 1974). But I digress....

Looking at the background mountains in the outdoor locations, I could tell they had filmed it somewhere else other than Albuquerque. It didn't look like California either. Where was it filmed?

According to imdb, it was filmed in Salt Lake City and Murray, Utah. And the high school? It's East High School in Salt Lake City, not far from the University of Utah! I used to ride my bike past that place every day when I lived there (1989-90)!

Indeed, in the Science Club Garden scenes, at the base of the background mountains, you can see wavecut benches, artifacts of the last Ice Age, when giant Lake Bonneville, precursor to today's shriveled Great Salt Lake, filled the entire valley with water. Those benches are most-prominent on the SE side of the valley, and indeed, that's where the camera was pointing.

The real East High School team name is the Leopards: in the movie, it was the Wildcats. Of course, the University of Arizona team name is Wildcats, and indeed, in the movie, I thought I could see the U of A mascot, Wilbur The Wildcat, dancing in the background (I went to U of A from 1980 to 1988).

It's strange how the various threads of your life rearrange after awhile, like DNA, into unexpected combinations.

The DVD features an extra disc, with several signature dances choreographed, so you can dance along with it, as I was doing at 2 a.m. this morning, distressing the dog with my clumsy mimicking, molasses tempo, and ineffective waving.