This year I’m turning 20 years old. And so does the movie that carried me through my childhood.
For a while now we’ve been experiencing nostalgic anniversaries: childhood songs turning 15, shows turning 10. Yet there’s something about seeing headlines reading something along the lines of “‘High School Musical’ Turns 20” that’s just different.
In case you haven’t seen the movie, first, why? But in short, it follows a group of high schoolers at East High in Albuquerque, N.M.. In Disney Channel fashion, the characters fall into several cliques: jocks, nerds, drama students. Each clique breaks the “Status Quo,” finding a love for being on stage and making friends outside of their groups. So of course, they consistently break out in song too.
But the Wildcats’ story didn’t end after they finally decided they were “All in This Together” in the closing number. Disney Channel gave us two more movies that kept us hooked. We followed the Wildcats through summer vacation and then back to East High for their senior year.
So what kept us invested for three movies? And for some of us, what’s kept us hooked even now?
Maybe most notably, was actor Zac Efron gracing our screens as heartthrob and star basketball player Troy Bolton. Just like Glee’s Finn Hudson (Corey Monteith), Troy showed us that the star athletes could also sing show tunes. And didn’t that just make us fall in love even more?
But seriously, the movie showed younger selves that people could move outside those cliques. Of course the movies and messages are cheesy, but that’s exactly what I loved to see.
And it wouldn’t be a Disney Channel original without a no-skips soundtrack and choreography from director Kenny Ortega.
I know I’m not the only one that still remembers the choreography to “We’re All in This Together.”
All these things combined, I did think that once I got to high school, we too would break out into song at any given moment. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, but a girl can dream.
Jan. 20 marked the official 20 year mark since we met the Wildcats, and several of the main cast members reminisced on their
days at East High in a recent article by PEOPLE Magazine.
“We were having fun, learning as we went, and honestly just enjoying every moment together. I never could’ve imagined it would still mean so much to people 20 years later, or that a whole new generation would connect with it, and I’m grateful for that,” Efron told PEOPLE.
The cast reflected on how much they loved their days on set, not knowing how big the movie franchise would soon be.
“What I remember most is how unburdened it felt,” Lucas Grabeel, who played Ryan Evans said. “There wasn’t a machine yet — no mythology, no expectations, no sense of legacy. We were present: singing around the piano between takes, laughing at our silliness and mistakes, figuring it out together.”
Since we last saw the Wildcats when they graduated from East High, rumors and fake trailers have circulated about a fourth movie in the series. Some were so realistic I thought the rumors were true. Instead the iconic Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale) took on New York City in her spin-off “Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure.” And later, Disney+ released “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” in 2019.
As great as they both were, nothing will ever be as good as the OG Wildcats. So for now we can keep rewatching the series
and have hopeful delusions that one day we’ll see the Wildcats again.
