DISNEY PLUSES … AND MINUSES

The best and worst of Disney+ original productions

More stories from Scarlette Mendoza

Disney+ has become a big hit with people ranging from young adults to kids in preschool. Disney+ is a streaming service that now has a majority of all Disney productions including classics and recent releases.

Disney has bought many big film productions such as Marvel, National Geographic and Star Wars. The service is competing against top-rated streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu.

I checked out the app, specifically the Disney+ Originals category, and discovered it is not a very broad category. The service was launched in the last few months, and it offered a decent list of shows and movies to watch.

So I reviewed the best and the worst shows of the category.

Encore!:

This one is my favorite. Host and Executive Producer Kristen Bell reunites the members of past high school musicals. The main idea of the show is to reunite the cast members as they challenge themselves to put on the same production in a matter of days.

It first started as an ABC special and later was turned into a series consisting of 12 episodes. The production crew offers professional directors, choreographers and crew members to assist with the whole production. The show also introduces the struggles and accomplishments of every member since they graduated from high school.

It is a wholesome show that brings people together through theater years after they graduated and never thought they would see each other again. Maybe I appreciate this show more than the others because as a high school senior, I can start to understand how special these moments become later on.

All in all, I have decided to give this show a four out of five stars.

 

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series

My least favorite show had to be the High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, and yes that is the name of the show.

Many of us grew up idolizing High School Musical and falsely hoping that was how high school would turn out.

To me it is all in the name. This title is not helping its mediocre storyline. It is based in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the original East High School building stands and it follows the theatre department along as they get ready for their first ever production of High School Musical: The Musical.

It follows the typical theme of social hierarchy between the grades, a love triangle and frenemies. I expected a reboot of the original movies and not some HSM obsessed teacher that, spoiler alert, lies about her credentials in order to be hired at the school in order to put on a production.

The show has so much going on that at times I gave up on trying to connect the characters to their background stories.

The love triangle consists of two sophomores who broke up over the summer when the girl said she loved him too soon, and when she came back from band camp, she had a new boyfriend who is an upperclassman. At first he seems too good to be true, but later it reveals his superiority complex and ruins his golden boy image.

The show is too complicated to even fully write a review on because I feel like I will miss something critical of the story.

In the end, I would give this story a two out of five stars because honestly I didn’t really resonate with the story lines, and I feel as if things were shoved into the show to seem more relatable. It was a futile attempt at best.