High School Musical and cell phone porno star Vanessa Hudgens is set to take on her most challenging role yet in a new movie from Walden Media. She’ll play a high school girl. Ok, that may not sound like much of a stretch, but wait till you hear the rest. She’ll be playing an unpopular girl. Bet she’s gonna have to get all method to pull this one off.

HR says the film, called Will, is a coming-of-age dramedy written by Josh Cagan and co-written and directed by Todd Graff. In it, a 15-year-old high school outcast and former stutterer who now speaks slowly and deliberately to avoid sounding like a scratched record, finds her life changed when she befriends a totally popular girl. They bond over their love of music, assemble a group of misfits into a rock band, rock out at the battle of the bands, and the stutter-girl falls in love with a fellow nerdy loser.

I do want to give Hudgens a little credit here. I mean, she could have signed up for some teen slasher or something and kept playing the pretty, prom-Queen type. This looks like it may at least attempt to cover slightly deeper territory, especially compared to say… High School Musical. Of course it’s still Hudgens, who’s naturally drop dead gorgeous, and thus a little hard to buy as the school outcast. It’d be nice, just for once, if they’d cast a fat, ugly kid in one of these roles. If Hollywood isn’t exactly sure what awkward, socially outcast kids actually look like, I’d be happy to send them my yearbook picture.

The last film to even come close to proper outcast casting was Ghost World. Thora Birch was brilliant in it, but where is she now? Eclipsed by the perfect figure of her co-star Scarlett Johansson, that’s where. Not that I’m complaining. Every movie could do with a little more Scarlett, but can’t somebody find something somewhere for the Thora’s of the world?