The high school is so sanitized that there are no drugs, cutthroat competition, or-inconceivably for a theatrical milieu-no gay students.
Overview
At New York's High School of Performing Arts, students from all walks of life get the chance to hone their skills as singers, actors, dancers, and more. Over four years, these young men and women will see if they truly have the dedication and talent to achieve success, while still juggling regular schoolwork, feelings of self-doubt, and budding romances.
Director and cast
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
Members of the class of '80 struggled to stay in school despite homelessness and crime; the greatest crisis in '09 finds a student's Sesame Street work schedule affecting her GPA.
There are enough hoary soap-operatic plottings for a thousand Gossip Girls (emotionally distant parents, almost-rapes, suicide attempts), yet Tancharoen individualizes each crisis so that no one character comes off as a mock-universal surrogate.
I don't mind the cornball and I don't mind the cliches, but I just think that the thing has to be executed a little better than this.
It's almost fatally modest. But it has a sweet spirit, and it offers only one true moment of inadvertent camp: a (lame) finale featuring an African dance routine completely at odds with all the white bread we've just been served.
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