Zac being heartthrob and trilogy star Zac Efron, though at 21 his days of playing a high school kid are all but behind him.

“High School Musical,” set in a fantastical high school where sex, drugs and violence are nothing more than dictionary words, is as innocent as a newborn. And to that it owes its success.

“It’s so not real,” Janene Kalina said. “But you know what? It’s sort of nice to get into that mode, with all the sad things happening in the world.”

Nearby was Kris Gleason’s husband, Dave, looking more than slightly out of place among the female-intensive movie crowd.

He said he was there of his own volition.

“I’ve actually looked forward to it,” he said. “The moral stature of it keeps it light and fun. They don’t get into things they shouldn’t get into.”

Well put, and certainly more so than the attempt made by one of the movie’s stars, Monique Coleman, who touted the HSM franchise with tortured syntax, telling mtv.com:

“I think this movie has inspired kids to follow their dreams — these really cliché things — but it’s sort of true.”