Ben said:
I love how everyone that hates High School Musical completely and utterly misses the point of the films.
That's the point. Disney have marketed HSM to the skies of tackyness. The songs are REALLY crap, and the entire concept is annoying as a mosquito in your tent. Heck, it's "Boy meets girl, add rivals, sing crap songs, happy ending for everyone". It's not exactly original, and neither are the classic Disney films (they are either based on books or fairytales), but Disney usually manages to pull that off well. It's just not to point it out to everyone, and let the films live on reputation alone. Which they in most cases have done brilliantly.
It's the fact that those characters are everywhere, and that the films are over-commercialised to the point of no "happy ever after". People start hating HSM even without knowing the concept of the films. The adverts are annoying, the music is bad, and yet worse, it's everywhere, and completely overshadows the Disney people love and remember. People who haven't seen the films only associate HSM with one thing: annoying!