High School Musical 3: Senior Year: Extended Edition (Blu-ray) (2008)

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General		Extras
Category	Musical	Main Menu Audio & Animation Easter Egg Featurette Featurette-Making Of Interviews-Cast & Crew Outtakes Deleted Scenes DVD Plus-DVD copy of the film Karaoke
Rating
Year Of Production	2008
Running Time	117:00
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Kenny Ortega
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Zac Efron Vanessa Hudgens Ashley Tisdale Lucas Grabeel Corbin Bleu Monique Coleman Bart Johnson
Case	Jewel
RPI	?	Music	David Lawrence

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 EX (6912Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Norwegian dts 5.1 (1536Kb/s) Danish dts 5.1 (1536Kb/s) Danish Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English Italian Spanish Danish Dutch Norwegian English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

    It is the final year for the gang at East High and everyone is roped into helping out with the annual school musical. Much to the chagrin of it-girl Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale), down-to-earth Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) is cast in the lead and will be romancing her real-life boyfriend Troy (Zac Efron) in the play. All is not going to go smoothly, however, as Gabriella has been offered a chance of a lifetime to start university early - on the other side of the country - at the same time that the show is due to go on. Meanwhile, Troy wrestles between his childhood desire to take up a basketball scholarship at the local university, alongside his best friend Chad (Corbin Bleu), with a new desire to go to the Julliard acting school.

    High School Musical was a sleeper hit the likes of which the Disney Channel had never seen before. As well as smashing ratings records when it screened on the Disney Chanel, both in its first run and its repeat screenings. It went on to make more in DVD sales alone than most studio pictures make in their theatrical and home runs. Its sequel repeated the formula and the success. This third movie in the series took to the big screen, repeating the franchise's success in a different market despite having the same modest production values and budget as its earlier incarnations. The franchise is, without a doubt, a cultural phenomenon, but are the movies any good? Going solely from this entry, the answer is both yes and no. Yes it is quite passable entertainment, and is inoffensive in every way (which will no doubt please most parents), but as for why HSM is a such a phenomenon? I don't get it and probably never will.

Video

    The movie is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio in 1080p.

    The video looks good, but is hampered by cinematography that is clearly of a TV-standard rather than a theatrical standard. The image is crystal clear and quite sharp. Very mild grain is visible in a handful of scenes. In fact, the video clear almost to the point the video looks unnatural.

    The colour is garishly bright, which suits the material in its own way. There is a good level of detail in shadows, although there is not a scene in the film that is dimly or unevenly lit so as to really display much in the way of shadows.

    There are no unpleasant video artefacts or film artefacts noticeable in the transfer.

    The film features English subtitles for the hard of hearing and "Sing-along" subtitles (for parents who wish they were hard of hearing). Both appear to be quite accurate and well-timed.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The disc features a plethora of audio options; English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, English, Norwegian and Danish Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kbps) tracks and Spanish, Italian and Danish DTS 5.1 (1.5Mbps) tracks. The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is the primary focus of this review. The English Dolby Digital track is also of a particularly high standard, but is a noticeable step down in clarity from the DTS HD (at least for this fussy listener!)

    The audio is crystal clear and will satisfy most listeners. The mix is quite aggressive and lacks the dynamic range that somebody looking for a disc to demo their fancy new system is likely to desire (there simply aren't any quiet bits for that sort of thing - although quiet bits would be rather out of place in this sort of flick.)

    The film features numerous catchy, saccharine drenched songs that are guaranteed to have kids singing along, as well as an equally cheesy score. The music is very well presented and makes great use of the surround speakers and subwoofer. The environmental audio makes less impressive use of the surrounds, however.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Disc One - Blu-ray Edition of the Film

Main Menu Audio & Animation

    The disc features extensive animated menus. The bulk of the extras are presented via an interactive high-school yearbook that typically presents one special feature and one easter egg per page. Most of the easter eggs consist of short clips of on-set footage featuring various cast members and play within a window in the yearbook graphic.

    Each of these extras is presented in 1080p with stereo audio.

Deleted Scenes (7:13)

    Eight insubstantial deleted scenes, preceded by a very short introduction from the director Kenny Ortega. Pretty much every one of these "scenes" really consists of a few lines of additional dialogue to scenes that are in the film and none of them add anything interesting to the story.

Blooper Reel (2:46)

    A rather droll blooper reel. Pure filler and more often amusing because it is not funny.

Cast Goodbyes featurette (5:40)

    The key cast members discuss how great HSM was, how they'll miss their characters SO much, and where their characters are likely to be in a few years time. Strangely enough, none of them suggest jail. Times have changed since I was in high school.

It’s All in the Dress featurette (2:31)

    A rather short featurette on the costumes prepared for the film's dreamy prom scene. The girls will get a kick out of this one.

New Class Profiles featurette (13:18)

    A featurette raving about the three new characters in High School Musical 3. Cynics will see this as nipping Jar-Jar Binks syndrome in the bud (and they're right). More filler.

Night of Nights featurette (7:27)

    Another prom featurette, this time it is more about selling kids on how exciting prom is, as well as a look at how it was staged for the film. One of the better featurettes on the disc.

Senior Awards featurette (2:15)

    Each of the cast members are given a joke award to suit their on-set personality. Shameless PR, but worth a look for tween fans.

Musical Numbers

    Each of the songs in the film can be played in isolation, like a music video, with optional sing-along subtitles. An impressive 18 numbers are featured. Parents, you have been warned!

Disc Two - DVD Edition of the Film

    The second disc in this set is a copy of the single-disc DVD version of the film, which is an excellent addition for parents looking to keep the kids busy on the spare TV or in the car. This disc features many of the same extras that are found on the Blu-ray disc, obviously in SD rather than HD. Specifically, it features:

• Deleted Scenes
• Bloopers
• Backstage Disney Featurettes (the 2 prom featurettes and cast goodbyes)
• Musical Clips form the film with sing-along option.

    The US Region A edition of High School Musical 3 features a third disc containing a digital copy of the film, but that Blu-ray misses most of the non-English tracks on the Region B release (it only features Spanish and English). Ultimately, the toss up is between a possibly unnecessary digital copy or extra language tracks arguably making this slight win for Region A.

    A decent tween flick, bloated with all the cheesy musical glitz a parent can stand and then some. I will never understand how this came to be the phenomenon it is, but it is certainly passable entertainment.

    A good number of extras are featured, targeted at the tween audience more than anyone else. The audio and video are solid, but certainly not reference material.

    This set also includes the DVD edition of the film, which is an invaluable babysitter.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall