Prom Two stars (out of 4) Rated: PG
First off, it’s “prom.” Not “the prom.”
Secondly, to the guys: you don’t call a girl up (or text, or wait by her locker) and ask, “Want to go to prom with me?”
You create an elaborate proposal of promage with props and romantic staging that replicates the finale from The Bachelor, ending with a rapturous “Yes!” from the lucky gal who launches into her fellow’s arms.
Cue tears of joy and pop music.
Disney’s Prom, arriving by white stretch limo in theatres, takes several dates to this dance, primarily John Hughes (Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club), Cameron Crowe (Say Anything) and its own studio (High School Musical) for the stories of a graduating class of sheltered seniors preparing for the last dance of their privileged California lives.
Friday Night Lights’ Aimee Teegarden is distractingly awkward in her first big-screen starring role as Nova Prescott, an overachiever who is organizing her school’s senior prom with an artistic Starry Night theme fuelled with an unabashed optimism for how this will be the best night of their teen lives.
Katie Wech’s script keeps to familiar territory as dating dramas play out among the teens.
Arrogant jock Jesse (DeVaughn Nixon, looking more like a parent than a student) is playing around — in a strictly G-rated sense — on his longtime girlfriend Jordan (Kylie Bunbury). Klutzy Justin (Jared Kusnitz) can’t get a date no matter how many attempts he makes. Stoner Rolo (Joe Adler), named for his passion for the chocolate caramels, gives no evidence he is actually a member of the 420 club — it is Disney, after all — even though he seems to be a grad of the Spicoli school.
Adding brooding intensity to the mix is Jesse Richter (Johnny Depp ringer Thomas McDonell — at 24 a tad old to be playing a high school senior). He’s a handsome prom hater with a family secret who can fill a muscle shirt and flip his long hair just so.
He drives a motorcycle and is the sole kid at school with enough stubble to make a Sicilian proud.
He and Nova occasionally cross paths in the principal’s office, trading hater quips and snarky put-downs.
Shades of Judd Nelson’s angry young man John Bender in The Breakfast Club, the principal detests perceived troublemaker Jesse and plots ways to make his life miserable. So when disaster strikes and the just-finished prom decorations are destroyed (a criminal incident that strangely goes uninvestigated) and Nova must rebuild everything, the principal decrees Jesse will be her helpmate.
While McDonell has the handsome down — he’s playing the younger version of Depp in Tim Burton’s reboot of Dark Shadows — he’s given precious little to work with in terms of script.
The jokes are silly and the drama predictable. The cast is likeable enough, although nobody is called upon to do much more than look elated or crushed, depending on the circumstances.
Directed by Joe Nussbaum, who’d likely rather point to the teen rom-com Sydney White in his resumé than the direct-to-DVD American Pie Presents the Naked Mile, Prom misses its chance to be more than a lightweight teen romance larded with songs from Katy Perry, Neon Trees and even McDonnell’s band, Moon.
It would have been better off borrowing from Easy A, one of the surprise hits of the Toronto International Film Festival last fall thanks to the supremely talented Emma Stone. While that movie also borrowed liberally from Hughes — director Will Gluck told his cast they were making “a John Hughes movie” — it adopted the bitter with the sweet, along with the wiseass side of teen angst.
Prom, we are told repeatedly by Nova, is the most unforgettable night of your life. The same can’t be said about the screen version of the event.
Linda Barnard is a syndicated movie critic for The Toronto Star.