Okay, perhaps it wasn't quite that Orwellian, but still. "High School Musical" encouraged kids to be true to themselves and follow their hearts no matter what their friends might say. "High School Musical 2," much to my disappointment, came across as advocating conformity.

For the handful of you who don't have kids, cable, or an interest in the shinier aspects of pop culture, here's the general plot of "High School Musical 2." 

Summer has arrived and the original gang from "High School Musical" is on the hunt for the perfect summer jobs. Chad wants to save up for a car, Gabriella wants to spend time with her new friends by working where they work, and Troy wants to save money for college.

(A note to Sallie Mae: When the high cost of a college education is a major plot point in a tween movie, this is a sign that you should lower your interest rates.)

Sharpay, however, wants Troy all to herself for the summer, and wrangles him a job at an exclusive country club owned by her family. When the manager calls to offer him a position, Troy refuses to take the job unless the country club hires all his friends as well. Sharpay wants Troy, so all of the East High Wildcats end up working there for the summer.

I should point out that none of them, including Troy, realize that Sharpay's family owns the club until Sharpay falls into the pool in her platform shoes and sparkly beach caftan and Gabriella, the new lifeguard, jumps in to rescue her.

Because Sharpay has a crush on him, Troy (who was hired as a waiter and caddy) ends up caddying a game for her and her family. But because his golf skills and knowledge are so impressive, Sharpay's father promotes him to assistant golf pro.He's only giving lessons to little kids, but it's a huge step up from the kitchen, where most of the rest of his friends work.

And because of his sports prowess, he starts getting more attention from Sharpay's family. Her father is on the board of the University of Albuquerque and arranges for him to practice with their basketball team. The coach thinks he's great and it looks like he has a good chance at a scholarship.

During dinner with Sharpay and her family, Troy gets roped into performing with Sharpay at the club's talent show. It's impossible for him to turn her down without being rude, even though he already agreed to sing with Gabriella.

Okay, that's the basic set up, and also where I started to become disappointed with the movie.

Based on the messages in the first "High School Musical," I fully expected Troy's friends and girlfriend to be understanding and supportive of him. He's the captain of the basketball team, a skilled athlete, and a great leader, so he deserves to have his talents recognized and rewarded. And since we're all in this together, one person's success encourages everyone else, right?

Not quite. His teammates don't like that Troy has been singled out, but they put up with it as long as Troy continues to share the credit for his success.

Not surprisingly, Troy eventually messes up. He has an opportunity during lunch to introduce Chad (who is waiting on him) to one of the college basketball coaches, but Troy gets so wrapped up in the conversation that he forgets and instead asks Chad to take his cheeseburger back to the kitchen because he asked for Swiss and they gave him cheddar by mistake.

But this is okay, because no one is perfect and friends forgive each other, especially friends who have known each other since preschool.

Wrong again. Chad is furious and so are the rest of Troy's friends. They snub Troy and say that they feel like they don't know him anymore because he's changed so much as a result of all this attention.

Chad even tells Troy that they didn't choose him as their captain because of his athletic ability, but because he's good at keeping the team together, basically telling him that he doesn't deserve the attention he's getting because he's the same as everyone else. Ouch.

This gives Troy a full-blown, entirely unnecessary identity crisis. Yes, he made that one mistake, but what can he really do about the attention he's getting? He had about as much say in that as a planet does about how many moons are pulled into its orbit by its gravitational field.

Sharpay's crush did bring him to the attention of her father, but after that, it was all because of his abilities. And, like Troy's own father says, you're not always going to be a part of your high school basketball team. You have to think about the future, and this means also thinking about yourself as an individual.

I thought Troy handled all the attention very well - he still made time for his friends and girlfriend, he was polite to Sharpay and her family, he didn't kiss up to anyone. When Troy was invited to practice with the college basketball team, his friends asked to be included, Troy told them that he couldn't do that because it wasn't up to him. Even though it was the hard thing to say, it was the right thing - if they had wanted the whole high school basketball team, they would've invited the whole high school basketball team. But they only wanted Troy and it would've been rude of him to insist they take everyone else as well.

But hey, Troy always has his sweet and wonderful girlfriend Gabriella to fall back on, right? They have such a close bond that nothing could ever come between them.

Disney, stop it. Every time I try to come up with a good moral for this movie, you shut me down. Gabriella, who up until this point hasn't been jealous at all of the time Troy's had to spend with Sharpay (in spite of her so-called best friend Taylor's constant complaining about Troy and his "transformation"), also accuses Troy of becoming a different person and breaking his promise to sing with her. Music is apparently the only thing that holds them together.

She tells him that she really wanted to enjoy this summer because it's the first summer she hasn't had to move. Translation: "My summer is more important to me than your future, let alone making our relationship work." She pretty much breaks up with him.

And sadly, if you hadn't seen "High School Musical," you would never even guess that Gabriella has a brain, much less is incredibly smart. She's much too giggly and cutesy to be taken seriously.

Poor Troy. He's graciously handled the attention that came his way, his future looks promising, but he doesn't have any friends because they're jealous and judgmental, and he doesn't have a girlfriend because she's selfish and shallow.

This leads to an angst-ridden song and dance number similar to Kevin Bacon's warehouse free-for-all in "Footlose." Not too surprising, though, as both movies have the same choreographer.

So how does Troy resolve all these false accusations and live happily ever after? I wish I could tell you. The ending was so confusing, I'm still not sure what happened. I'll do my best.

After being dropped from Sharpay's talent show act so she could sing with Troy, Sharpay's brother Ryan befriends the rest of the Wildcats and ends up choreographing a talent show routine for them. Sharpay feels threatened and has club employees banned from participating in the talent show.

Troy tells Sharpay that because of this ban, he can't sing with her. Sharpay says he's not included in that ban, but Troy tells her he's through with special treatment. He returns to his old job in the kitchen and apologizes to all his friends - even though he only had that one little mistake to apologize for in the first place.

Sharpay continues to plead and Troy agrees to perform with her if everyone else can perform, too. (Troy, haven't you suffered enough because of the whole team mentality?) Ryan, however, keeps Sharpay offstage so Troy and Gabriella can have a surprise reunion a la duet.

Sharpay awards the talent show trophy to Ryan, though I don't really know why. Had my brother kept me offstage so my crush could reunite with his bubble-headed ex-girlfriend instead of singing with me, I would've bopped him over the top of the head with the trophy.

I ended up having more sympathy for Sharpay and Troy (as individuals, not as a couple) than for the rest of the characters combined. Because based on her freakouts after being ditched by both Troy and Ryan, Sharpay can't handle going onstage without a singing partner, even though she has all those drama skills and all that singing ability. So underneath all that bravado, Sharpay doesn't really have any self-confidence? That's a bit of stretch, Disney, trying to cram that into the last 15 minutes.

Troy and Gabriella get back together and Troy rather unhappily agrees to focus on the present instead of thinking about his future. Which I'm sure will work out just fine for him until he graduates college with a mountain of student loan debt and realizes he'll be living in his parents' basement until he's 45. But that's okay, because Gabriella will still want to be with him. At least until his hair falls out.

I've almost given up trying to find the moral of the story, but as far as I can see, it's this:

You can be special and an individual as long as you do so within the parameters that have already been established by your peers. Your friends will only support you to a certain extent - after that, they will become jealous and vindictive. If your star shines too brightly, you run the risk of alienating the people you care about and who you thought cared about you, and the only way you can win them back to be just like them. So stick to what you know. Stick to the status quo.

And there's a "High School Musical 3" in the works. What's next? Are they going to start referring to the basketball team mascot as Big Brother? This movie franchise is the dead. 

When I get home tonight, I'm going to watch something uplifting, something that celebrates mankind's potential for excellence instead of squashing it down. Something like "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." Talk about a movie that gave hope to a generation.