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Despite what Coke ads would have you believe, high school was not fun. For the majority of students who find themselves trapped within its walls, it’s a miserable experience. It’s just no fun trying to navigate the buys halls, the busy kids, and the social pressure. As a teenager who preferred cupcakes to calisthenics, I didn’t do myself any favors. Furthermore, my insistence on wearing Return of the Jedi T-shirts didn’t do me any favors either.

It is because we, by and large, did not have entirely pleasant or meaningful high school experiences, that we jump at the opportunity to idealize movies that re-conjure them. If we can cheer for that one kid who just wont take it anymore and decides to dance down the halls to his true love, we will! Strangely, I did try once to start a dance chain down the halls between classes my junior year — only to be pushed into an open locker and laughed at. Ok, I deserved that, but still.

We are so desperate to laugh and transform our own high school experiences that we will flock to any film — even if it’s made for television — in droves. This explains why high school movies, had they been made in any other genre, are so wildly successful despite lacking a solid plot or even decent acting. This is our primal need to be transformed — in high school — once and for all.

To be sure, there are various highly successful high school movies out there. But, one of the best examples of the genre is Disney’s aptly named High School Movie, which was subsequently released as a two-disc boxed set entitled High School Musical: Remix. The wild appeal of this film is not its plot — which was a typical rehashing of the greatest high school story of all time, Romeo and Juliet. No, the appeal is in the infectious mix of melodrama, Disney comedy, and musicality.

It is impossible to withstand the barrage of super-smiling fun that is thrown at you. From cast to set design to the actual dance pieces — you can’t help it. You just start smiling like a buffoon. Yes, you know it will all end well — it is Disney, after all, but you watch and are enthralled just the same. So deep is our desire to have done things differently, to have stood out and dared to sing out loud between third and fourth period.

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