Musical a sweet reflection on high school dilemmas

Here's a snapshot of pure joy: 300 tweenyboppers at

High School Musical 3: Senior Year

, surfing a wave of Zac Efron love.

The first two installments of the franchise broadcast on the Disney Channel were pleasant enough. But to witness Number 3 explode on the big screen in a theater hopping with fans is to experience Beatlemania for the millennials. Not since A Hard Day's Night have I seen such collective blissout. (If only HSM's music were that memorable!)

For those who tuned in late, HSM is the buoyant saga of hoops kings and drama queens at Albuquerque's East High. The stories pivot on Troy (Efron), a basketball star blessed with blue-crush eyes, a passable baritone, and swivel hips that are just what the director ordered for the annual spring musicale.

The films take it as a given that some think it uncool, and borderline unmanly, for a guy to sing and dance. And they don't care what the arbiters of cool and manly think. The principal charm of the series, a throwback to '50s musicals with boys in pompadours and girls in ponytails, is that it thinks it's cool to be yourself, whoever that is.

When Troy beholds the lovely brainiac Gabriella (Vanessa Anne Hudgens), she of the kitten face and catlike gait, the only thing permissable in a G-rated film is for him to hum and hoof his R-rated feelings.

But now that it's his final year at East, Troy isn't in a singy/dancy mood. He's reliving his basic dilemma, this time framed as the question, Basketball or Broadway? With athletic recruiters at the championship game and drama-school recruiters at the musical, Troy is an exposed nerve of performance anxiety and indecision.

Director Kenny Ortega, the man who deserves thanks for introducing musical theater to a new generation, opens the film with an extreme close-up of Troy, anxious on the court, overwhelmed by parental and peer expectations. He doesn't know who he is, a theme that resonates through the film - and with its intended audience - as Troy finds himself.

His friends know where they're going. Gabriella to Stanford, best bud Chad to State, and rich kids Sharpay and her twin, Ryan, to theater school. As Troy worries about what he wants, the twins (Ashley Tisdale and Lucas Grabeel) know that they "want it all," and sing it out in a glittery babes-on-Broadway dream sequence that is one of HSM 3's two standout numbers.

The other, "The Boys Are Back," performed by Efron and Corbin Bleu (as Chad) in an auto junkyard, proves that musicals boast muscle as well as tinsel. Efron and Bleu dance on spare tires and with spare parts, playfully making their characters' transition from boys to men, from the kids who play with tools to the professionals who use them.

For the most part, the film's musical numbers are dynamic, propelling the story forward. The same cannot be said about Peter Barsocchini's colorless screenplay.

While Troy ultimately resolves his conflict, the filmmakers do not resolve theirs. That Hudgens is a stronger singer than dancer, and Efron the reverse, makes their musical pairings lopsided, but no less sweet.

Romantically linked offscreen, Efron and Hudgens make it hip to be square. And yes, dear readers, they kiss.