After two monumentally successful installments on the Disney Channel, the High School Musical franchise makes the leap to movie theaters with High School Musical 3: Senior Year. The good news for fans of the series is that everything about it makes the transition pretty much intact; the bad news for everyone else is that everything about it makes the transition pretty much intact.

High School Musical is an inherently chintzy enterprise, and something about blowing it up to big-screen size feels wrong. For the most part, the larger scope only highlights how slight and inconsequential the movie is; it’s one thing to watch this cheesy, tacky production on your TV, where many of its flaws are hidden or excusable, but to see it larger than life inevitably invokes comparisons to the more stylish, accomplished movie musicals that HSM never comes close to matching.

This installment does at least make some efforts, though, and its school-centric story is an improvement over HSM 2, which was set during the summer at a fancy country club. Now the main characters are back at East High for their senior year, but all of the problems from the first two movies arise once again (or, to be less charitable, are recycled shamelessly). Basketball star Troy (Zac Efron) is still torn between sports and the stage, while his girlfriend Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) wonders whether to sacrifice happiness for academic success. Mean girl Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) is still out to steal both Troy and the spotlight from Gabriella, despite twice having learned the error of her ways.

Helping dramatize these low-stakes conflicts is another big stage production, this one the final musical the gang will get to put on before heading off to college. It is of course, a high school musical about high school musicals, and a helpful excuse for characters to constantly burst into vapid, soul-baring songs. The music is one thing that has decidedly not improved here; the songs are as bland and forgettable as ever, rendered popular only by sheer force of Disney marketing. They’re still tinny pop confections without the grandeur of great show tunes, although director/choreographer Kenny Ortega, behind the camera for the third time, does manage to use his bigger budget to stage some more elaborate dance numbers that bolster the weak songs.

Best among those is “I Want It All,” a duet between Sharpay and her flamboyantly dressed twin brother Ryan (Lucas Grabeel), which pays homage to vintage musicals while convincingly blazing its own path into the future. “A Night to Remember” also has some flair, but too many of the numbers simply feature cast members gesticulating wildly into the air. Hudgens is still completely wooden, and although Troy and Gabriella finally do kiss in this installment, the two lead actors remain almost entirely chemistry-free.

None of these complaints will matter at all to the rabid HSM fanbase, of course, and it’s hard to find too much fault with a franchise so wholesome and intent on having fun. The follow-your-dreams messages get a little muddled when everyone’s dreams amount to just about the same thing, but even in diluted form they’re good for kids to hear. Efron, Hudgens and Tisdale are probably too famous at this point to return for College Musical, and HSM 3 gives them a proper sendoff, but it also introduces a few new characters who are bound to continue providing positive, squeaky clean entertainment to tweens for years to come. Maybe eventually they’ll get the chance to sing some better songs, too.