Mandirenfroe

I'm a fan of the High School Musical movies, meaning I love the first one and could go without the second and third on my movie shelf. However, what I loved about Sharpay in the first movie was the scenes with her and her brother, Ryan. They completed each other. For example when it was their turn to go audition for the spring musical, Ryan starts to walk ahead but Sharpay stops him and walks in front of him. He let's her, but rolls his eyes behind her back. Without him, it was just be a self-absorbed Diva being non- humorously pushy with everybody else.

Which is what this movie was pretty much about. They tried to have her co-star be an adorable puppy, but it didn't grab the audience's heart or attention. In fact, I honestly could only watch about thirty minutes of this movie before leaving the room.

Side character spin off movies or television shows rarely work out. They completely flop if you don't include the things that made them awesome to begin with. In this case, her brother.

First off, let me just say that Anna Kendrick never fails to impress me. Even if I don't think she's the perfect choice for a role, she does an amazing job no matter what. I loved Beca in the first movie. She was a very cool, sarcastic girl that did some self-discovery in the first movie and found out that she wasn't as closed up as appeared to be. However in the second film, I feel we see too big of a difference in this character. Losing all of her quips and cool, she becomes a bit of a nervous, insecure girl that I felt was a character flaw in the writing, and not in Anna Kendricks portrayal of Beca.

The beginning also started off a bit slow to me, even with the big Fat Amy entrance, and I felt a bit of disappointment in scenes that could've been really epic and funny, but ended up just passing by with no more than a corny joke here or there. Benji, the newest edition of the Treblemakers at the end of the first film, is now one of the leads of the a capella group, and I was really hoping that he would have a solo. However, instead of a solo they make him talk even less by making him super nervous and unable to talk to the girl of his dreams.

Then enters the German group, Das Sound Machine, who bring a whole new look to a capella groups, musically and performance wise. I was really impressed after their first performance. I also think that the riff-off scene at David Cross's house was what started to save the movie for me.

I also think they were trying WAY too hard to make the new song, Flashlight, into the next big-hit Cups song. However, what was great about Cups was that it didn't set out to be a huge hit. Just an original song, sung beautifully by Anna Kendrick. This time around, they were just trying to hard to make it big, and it didn't live up to the hype for me.

That being said, as the film progressed, there were more surprising funny scenes, funny lines coming from the beloved side characters from the first one, great mash-ups of classic songs, and lots of great Fat Amy scenes.