Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 16 years and 5 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

I took my daughter to see “High School Musical 3: Senior Year” this afternoon. I guess everyone who wanted to see this saw it opening weekend, because this was only the third weekend of its release and the theater was pretty empty … and all the kids were girls under 10, as I expected.

“Senior Year” follows the now-familiar (to anyone with a young daughter) characters of Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay, Ryan, Chad, Taylor, and Kelsi as they finish their last year at East High and face graduation and moving on to college.

Like the first two films, this one has some snappy song-and-dance routines but is a little light on story/plot (but I guess HSM is about the music after all, right?). My daughter’s favorite song was “The Boys are Back,” sung by Troy and Chad in a junk yard scene where they reminisce about being kids pretending to be ninjas, superheroes, etc. My daughter particularly liked the part where they turned into 8-year old versions of themselves. I didn’t really see anything “big budget” about this movie compared to the originals which aired directly on the Disney Channel. I guess doing a full theater release was just one more way for Disney to rake in the cash before the end of the franchise (like they won’t make a ton on merchandising and tie-ins anyway!).

It’s an amazing world our kids are growing up in: when we got home after the movie, I purchased the HSM3 soundtrack from the Amazon MP3 store (for $4 less than the DRMed version on iTunes) and then burned it onto CD so she had it for her bedtime listening enjoyment. Incredible.

If you’re a parent who’s seen HSM3 (or any of the HSM movies for that matter), you owe it to yourself to check out the “Night School Musical: Senior Year Equivalent” sketch from Saturday Night Live.