High School Musical (Two-Disc Remix Edition)

The bestselling soundtrack is catchy in that Disney-pop kind of way, mixing in a dash of hip-hop ("Getcha Head in the Game," punctuated by squeaky basketball shoes and other sound effects), salsa ("Bop to the Top"), and the endearingly hammy ("What I've Been Looking For" performed by Sharpay and her brother, Ryan, played by Lucas Grabeel). It's not hard to imagine High School Musical becoming a semi-staple for high school groups to perform themselves. --David Horiuchi

On the DVD
The two-disc Remix Edition of High School Musical retains all the bonus features of the original DVD and adds a Spanish audio track and 34 minutes of new features. Following a couple minutes of red-carpet interviews from the DVD release party, "High School Reunion" (6 min.) gathers the cast for some more interviews, glimpses of their other Disney Channel credits, and appearances on the Teen Choice Awards and in London and Sydney. The longest feature is the dance-along, in which the cast teaches the choreography for "Get'cha Head in the Game" and "We're All in This Together." At 16 minutes, it allows for move-by-move instruction followed by half- and full-speed runthroughs, though they're facing the camera, so home participants will have to figure out the mirror image or simply ignore the left-right directions and do it backward. And because this is the Remix Edition, there are videos of the remixed versions of "Breaking Free" and "We're All in This Together" as well as a video of "Eres Tu," a Spanish version of "What I've Been Looking For" (the Ryan and Sharpay version) by Mexican band Belanova. Retained from the original DVD are the sing-along subtitles, the making-of featurette, the "Bop to the Top" rehearsal, and the music videos for "We're All in This Together" and "I Can't Take My Eyes Off of You." Not included in this version: the trivia-packed "pop-up edition" that debuted on the Disney Channel on Thanksgiving weekend 2006. So even if the Remix Edition is a little thin for two discs, fans will enjoy the new stuff while they wait for High School Musical 2. --David Horiuchi