...but that isn't saying much. Prom tells the story of a bunch of teenagers who all want to go to prom. Their troubles with getting dates, fixing destroyed decorations, and a bunch of other high school drama stuff that is neither interesting nor realistic. I understand Prom is geared towards the TWEEN crowd and I'm sure those tween girls will love this movie.
The cast is full of a bunch of no name kids, first time actors. This was done on purpose to get the innocence of young kids caught on film. The director wanted it to feel real. Big mistake because a lot of these kids can't act. It doesn't come off as real, instead it feels forced and unnatural. This is the film biggest flaw, these kids aren't believable in their roles. The only one who manages to be interesting is Nicholas Braun, who does have some acting in his background. He was also in Kevin Smith's ambitious if flawed Red State. His story about trying to get a girl to go to prom with him and failing each time is the only funny bits and it's due to the performance he manages to give. He has good comedic timing and should have some sort of career after this. The rest of the cast I'm not so sure about.
There main story here is that of a young girl who has a bright future ahead of her. She is also the prom committee organizer and when two teens accidentally burn down all the decorations, she is partnered up with the resident 'bad boy' to get them all back in working order. If he doesn't help, he won't graduate. So these two polar opposite kids have to put their differences aside and work together to get everything done for prom. Hmmm, might they discover that their preconceived notions of one another were wrong and they start to like each other? No way, right? That would be too obvious and clichéd. But of course it goes down that road. It's a shame that the two actors didn't have any chemistry with each other.
The second character story I had a problem with involved a young guy trying to be on the lacrosse team. He's a freshman and he manages to become friendly with a really cute girl. Tyler, team captain, soon to be prom king and all around popular guy sees the cute girl with the freshman and decides to use him to get to her. The problem is, he's with another girl and they are going to prom together. The cute girl decides to be friendly with the freshman, despite wanting to be with the popular one. This is all fine and dandy, until the soon to be prom queen discovers that he wants to be with this cute girl and hearts are broken. Cute girl decides to ditch freshman to be with soon to be prom king and go to prom. She finds out that soon to be prom queen dumped him because he found out about her, but he told her that he dumped soon to be prom queen so he can be with her. She feels cheated and goes back to the freshman. Confused?
The problem I have with that is that she does to him pretty much what soon to be prom king did to her. He only goes to be with her because his prior relationship didn't work out. So he's the scumbag. Yet, she only goes to be with the freshman because her relationship with him didn't work out. How are we suppose to be okay with this? Mixed messages here.
The script, direction and even cinematography are all bare minimum. Nothing interesting ever happens on the screen, or in the script. It's as if they were on autopilot during the production of the film. Putting a camera on and making people do stuff in front of it is not exciting, nor is it good, in my opinion. Having interesting, complex characters in situations they have to overcome is. This is why Prom did not work for me and will most likely work for the tween target audience. They will find the film cute, the boys cute and the music good enough to dance to. This was not the type of Highschool I went to. If I want a film that helps me discover who I am at that age, I watch John 'fricken' Hughes my friend, not a cheaply made Disney flick.
