High School Musical 2: Extended Edition (2007)

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General		Extras
Category	Musical	Outtakes-Blooper Reel Music Video-Exclusive Scene and 3 music videos Featurette-Behind The Scenes-9 Rehearsal cam clips w/ introduction by Kenny Ortega Trailer-Sneak Peek for Phineas and Ferb/Hannah Montana
Rating
Year Of Production	2007
Running Time	106:32
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (69:01)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Ads Then Menu
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 Mark L. Taylor
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$29.95	Music	David Lawrence

   High School Musical 2 is the follow-up to Disney's enormously successful High School Musical television movie from 2006. It premiered on US television on August 17th, 2007 to record ratings, 18 million viewers tuned in to watch the follow-up to High School Musical. The success of the High School Musical series saw a third movie in the franchise release last year, High School Musical 3: Senior Year.

    High School Musical 2 sees Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) trying to balance his need for raising funds for college with his desire to spend all summer with Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens). Sharpay and Ryan Evans (Ashley Tisdale and Lucas Grabeel) plan to spend the summer at their family country club and Sharpay arranges to get Troy hired so that she can spend time with him. Troy convinces the club's manager, Mr Fulton (Mark L. Taylor) to hire his friends and this is where the fun starts as conflicts arise between Troy, his college aspirations, his friends and Sharpay's plans.

    The High School Musical series has made a huge star of Zac Efron and it's interesting to see him wishing to breakout from the character role that he is synonymous with in this film by choosing to accept the lead in Richard Linklater's upcoming 2009 film, Me and Orson Welles.

Video

    High School Musical 2 was filmed in a 16x9 enhanced for widescreen television ratio, 1:78:1 but was premiered for US television in a 4x3 full frame 1:33:1 aspect ratio. The Blu-ray release utilises the widescreen ratio whereas this DVD uses the full frame transfer.

    Although the aspect ratio is full-frame, 1:33:1, it seems that director Kenny Ortega has framed the image for television, with not much information on-screen outside that 1:33:1 aspect ratio.

    Although the DVD is 7.49 gb in size to accommodate the extras on the disc and the main film has an average bitrate of 6.33 m/b per sec, this disc has significant compression issues. Macro-blocking can be seen in scenes that contain long shots, mostly in musical numbers where the camera has to take long shots to include the cast. Macro-blocking is mostly evident at 3:05 - 3:38, 4:13-5:02, 13:34-16:02, 20:12-23:28, 43:00-43:08, 46:32-47:29, 97:33, 101:05 and 103:07-104:44. The opening and end credits also contain mosquito noise or the Gibb effect. Again, this is related to compression issues in the transfer of the film to DVD.

    Colour is slightly brightened to emphasise primary colours and to make the film look like a Disney children's feature.

    There are no MPEG artefacts present in the transfer.

    Subtitles are in English, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and Hindi with karaoke lyrics for the 12 musical numbers in the film also provided in English, Spanish, Dutch and Hindi.

    The RSDL change occurs right in the middle of a scene and is quite noticeable unfortunately at 69:01.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    Unlike, the video transfer, the audio soundtrack for the film is excellent with extra emphasis on the musical numbers which sound great in a surround-sound home theatre system.

    The audio Tracks are all encoded in Dolby Digital 5.1 at 384 kbps. These include the main English soundtrack, a music only track, a Spanish and Dutch overdub track and a Hindi track.

    Dialogue is clear and synchronised throughout.

    The music numbers are very catchy, a forewarning needs to be issued here because if you purchase this DVD for your child to watch over and over, you'll soon find that you to will be singing the catchy tunes also!

The new songs are listed below:

1) What Time Is It

2) What Time Is It (Pt. 2)

3) Fabulous

4) Work This Out

5) You Are The Music In Me

6) Humuhumunukunukuapua'a

7) I Don't Dance

8) You Are The Music In Me (Sharpay Version)

9) Gotta Go My Own Way

10) Bet On It

11) Everyday

12) All For One

The surround channel usage is well-defined in the soundtrack, especially during the musical numbers.

The subwoofer is utilised throughout the film to emphasise the bass in the soundtrack without any distortion effects.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Outtakes

Music Video

Featurette-Behind The Scenes

Trailer

   High School Musical 2: Extended Edition has been released in identical versions in the United States, United Kingdom and France with slight variations for languages and subtitling. A different 2-disc extended dance version has also been released which includes extra musical numbers and deleted scenes and a sneak peek at High School Musical 3. This 2-disc dance version is available in Region 1 and Region 4.

    High School Musical 2 is definitely not my type of movie, but judging by the fact that this review is late because my nine year-old daughter played it repeatedly for the first three days after I received the disc to review, I would say that High School Musical 2 is highly recommended, especially for the pre-teen audience.

    It is a shame about the compression issues inherent in the video transfer as the audio soundtrack is great. The macro-blocking in the transfer is more evident on larger widescreen televisions, so I would recommend watching this on a smaller fullscreen 4x3 television.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall