High School Musical

We made our kid's year yesterday.

We took her to see the much-anticipated conclusion of the High School Musical franchise, High School Musical 3: Senior Year. And her daddy, who scares me sometimes with how easily he is swayed to open his wallet when his daughter asks him for something from underneath her pretty long eyelashes, bought her the soundtrack from Tar-jay the day before so she would know all the songs. It was, as she told me this morning, "a magical weekend."

I enjoyed seeing Ryan, Sharpay, Gabriella, and Troy up there on the big screen. It was a well-done movie that may not change the minds of those too-cool-for-high-school haters but will cement its fan following among kids and their secretly-fanatic parents. I couldn't have had a better time.

Oh, wait. Yeah, I could've. If the kid behind me had not kicked my seat through the whole movie (and had his clueless mother not let him) and if the kid a few seats to my left hadn't babbled through the whole thing (and again if his clueless mother had stopped encouraging him to talk by asking him comprehension questions and asking him to repeat himself whenever he asked a question about what was going on) I would have really enjoyed it.

Seriously, people. I know we were at what is arguably a kids' movie at an early afternoon show. But whatever happened to keeping kids relatively quiet so that people with good movie-going children can hear? Or teaching them that kicking the seat in front of them in rhythm for 2 hours is not acceptable social behavior? I know kids aren't going to be perfect in a movie. But c'mon. Teach them what they should and should not do in a movie theater so that when they're grown they break this much-discussed trend of bad movie house manners. Don't engage your three-year-old in conversation during the movie! Don't let your pre-schooler kick the seat in front of him so hard that the patron in the seat has to remove her soda straw from the back of her throat after taking a drink at the same time as an especially violent push! And if you can't stop that, don't bring them! 3 year-old aren't exactly the target audience, anyway!

"Mommy," Ainsley asked after her bath, "Why did that one kid talk through the whole movie?"

Because his parents are massive tools!

Anyway.

Jason remarked in the parking lot after that it was a cute movie, but also unexpectedly sad.

"It's like we watched those kids grow up. The boys especially look older now; they look like men and not like boys anymore."

As someone who had to censor my brain from having inappropriate thoughts about the definitely manly-looking Zac Efron, I couldn't agree more.

Because I am a sap, I found myself a little teary in the last scene when the kids sang their last number in their graduation robes and took a final bow. They look like they had such a good time. They also looked like they knew that nothing that high-profile may ever come their way again. There was a look of, "I'm twenty years old and my career just peaked!"

That's sad, y'all.

When Jason went to check on Ainsley last night after she had been in bed about an hour, he found her wide awake.

"Daddy, I've been trying to sleep," she said. "But I just can't. I close my eyes but I have those High School Musical songs running through my head and I can't get them out!"

Tell me about it, kiddo.


Did any of you brave the theater this weekend to see this movie with your kiddos? Or are you soooo not into that whole thing? And is the "Scream" scene Zac's audition for the Footloose remake I keep hearing about or what? (In my honest opinion, he totally smokes Kevin Bacon in the good looks and good dancing departments.)