The Ultimate Birthday Gift and the Ultimate Escape

I knew the moment that the flamboyant boy two rows behind me yelled “WHAT TEAM!?” and everyone around him answered with a resounding “WILDCATS! GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME!” that I had made a smart decision: to travel downtown at 11:30PM on a Thursday night to take in what could possibly be the third and final saga of the greatest high school related musical trilogy of our time. Yes, I just attended a midnight showing of High School Musical 3: Senior Year (Most original title EVER!)

And…it…was….AWESOME!

From the first frighteningly close, close-up of a sweaty Zac Efron in his signature Wildcat basketball uniform, which was met with resounding yells and catcalls from all women and gay men in the audience (which was, save for about five sad boyfriends, everyone in the audience), to the gratuitous slow-motion, pink-covered entrance of Sharpay Evans (the inspiration for my Halloween costume: pictures coming soon), to the eight moments Troy and Gabriella almost kissed (including one where he is IN HER BED ROOM. AT NIGHT. WITH CHOCOLATE COVERED STRAWBERRIES! What are you DOING Disney?!), to the awkward forced sexual tension between an obviously gay Ryan and a pre-pubescent looking Kelsi, to…to…every last awkward, subltly sexual, over-the-top, ridiculous, dance-filled moment of the whole movie, I and everyone in the audience (made up almost entirely of 18-20 year old theater students, thanks to our chosen theater’s location in the heart of Emerson College) soaked up every minute: clapping, yelling, awwing, possibly crying, dancing, and swooning. (Zac Efron’s arms could star in their own movie…and don’t even get me STARTED on the gratuitous and immensely satisfying naked back shots in the locker room…)

I think it might be my favorite one yet, but that might also be because I got to enjoy it with a room full of college kids who also like to ironicly love and obsess over children’s programming (as further evidenced by the round of applause Miley Cyrus got during the previews) as opposed to watching in the living room with my dad, whose entire review of High School Musical 2 was “Well, that’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back.”

So, I implore you, if your life has sucked lately, if you are stressed, angry, sad, or at all just plain ticked off about the world (and let’s be honest, there’s a lot to be just plain ticked off about), get yourself into a theater full of theater-loving, Zac Efron-obsessed girls and gay men and escape for a while. After the cast members take their final bows and do one last freeze frame jump in front of that famous red curtain, go home and download the soundtrack to try to hold onto that feeling. My soundtrack is downloading from iTunes as we speak. Let’s hope this helps.