Every once in a while a silly adolescent rom-com comes along that despite our best efforts, we can not help but enjoy. And then a movie like Prom comes along and we remember why we resisted the genre in the first place. With a script that makes Nora Ephron seem delectably art house and a cast of new youngsters that, with any luck, will never be heard from again, Prom is best watched with a group of friends, snickering at its banal clichés - or better yet, not watched at all.
Director Joe Nussbaum’s latest stab at teenage melodrama (his previous efforts being Sleepover and Sydney White) focuses on a group of high school students all counting down to one very important night - you guessed it, Prom. Aimee Teegarden leads the pack as Nova, straight-A student and all around overachiever who devotes herself to making Prom the absolute best night ever - all for the sake of the senior class of course.
She soon finds herself forced into the company of Jesse (Thomas McDonell) the campus bad boy, indicated by his motorcycle and shoulder-length hair, who receives the worst punishment a bad boy can hope to receive: assist with Prom decorations. Nova is less than pleased with her new assistant, until she discovers he has a heart of gold - and biceps that look damn good carrying heavy Prom décor. It’s a seemingly endless road of clichés from here.
Tweens in need of some vicarious bad boy/good girl romance will surely find opportunities to squeal (while further developing the idealistic expectations for future relationships that Twilight so artfully ingrained), but that’s about all that can be said for this tired and predictable comedy. Bottom line: post-pubescent readers, stay away.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
A short film about school outcast Lloyd (a not so horrible Nicholas Braun) and his venture to find a date to Prom, a standard Making Of featurette, several music videos, deleted scenes and just about the most unnecessary series of “bloopers” to ever grace a Bonus Features menu.
"Prom" is on sale August 30, 2011 and is rated PG. Children & Family, Comedy. Directed by Joanna Kerns, Joe Nussbaum. Written by Katie Wech. Starring Aimee Teegarden, Thomas Mcdonell.
