Prom

If Prom had been allowed to be more honest with itself, it'd be sort of sweet and maybe magical. Instead, we get a workman-like script, checking off the cliches one-by-one, while we get some bright young performances, and a handful of effective moments that don't add up to much. The movie wants to be a Love Actually for the "tween" crowd, cutting back and forth across different students and storylines during the weeks leading up to prom night. But the characters never grow into anyone we can care about, because they all come from the cliche stockpile of various other teen comedies.

Stop me if you've ever seen characters like these in a movie before. We have the school "Princess" who is the head of the prom committee, top of her class, and a scholarship to a big college who's under a lot of pressure from her dad to continue being "perfect". (She's played by Aimee Teegarden.) Next, we have the motorcycle-riding bad boy who is always in trouble, but secretly has a good heart, and is trying to help support his single mom and kid brother. (Thomas McDonnell, channeling Breakfast Club-era Judd Nelson.) We also have the perfect young couple (DeVaughn Nixon and Kylie Bunbury) who are headed for trouble when the girl believes the guy is cheating on her, another couple (Yin Chang and Jared Kusnitz) have been together forever and have their lives planned out, and the girl is afraid to tell her guy that she's going away to a different college than he is, a kindhearted but geeky kid (Nolan Sotillo) who has feelings for the pretty young girl (Danielle Campbell) that is currently being chased after by the school jock, the school weirdo (Joe Adler) who is never seen with anyone, but claims to have a long distance relationship with a Greek supermodel girlfriend in Canada, and a tall, awkward guy (Nicholas Braun) who is constantly unlucky in love, and whose failed attempts to ask girls to the big dance makes up the film's main running gag.

Prom leaps from each of these plot points, spending precious little time on the characters themselves. We basically get the set up, the inevitable crisis, and then the hurried resolution. If the screenplay had been actually interested in making these characters seem like real kids, we'd have quite a movie. Instead, we get a paint-by-numbers plot that never deviates from the expected course. Let's take a closer look at the film's central couple, the school "Princess" Nova, and Jesse the bad boy. Nova faces a setback early on when the shed holding all the prom decorations burns down in a freak accident. With only three weeks leading up to the big dance, and everyone else on the prom committee too busy with other school projects, Nova fears she'll have to work alone, until the Principal charges Jesse with having to help, thinking that it will keep him out of trouble until he graduates.

Nova and Jesse don't work well together at first - She's organized and efficient, and he couldn't seem to care less. He also always shows up late, even though he routinely cuts his last class every day. Of course, there's an understandable reason behind it all. The reason why Jesse disappears every afternoon and shows up late is that he has to pick up his kid brother from school and make sure he gets home okay, since their single mom has to work all day. It turns out Jesse is handy when it comes to fixing things (like the malfunctioning fountain decoration for the dance), and Nova slowly starts to see him for the sweet, misunderstood guy that he really is. Naturally, Nova's stern and protective father (Dean Morris) will have none of this. He thinks Jesse is a loser, and won't have him drag his daughter down. When he eavesdrops on his daughter talking about Jesse with some of her friends, he pays the kid a visit, and tells him to stay away from his daughter. This leads to the inevitable misunderstanding between Nova and Jesse, when Jesse instantly turns cold toward her, and she can't understand why. Will they get back together in time for the final dance? I'm sure those of you who have never seen a movie like this before will be in total suspense.

Even its many other subplots don't break free from the predetermined path. Director Joe Nussbaum (Sydney White) has cast some bright and likable young actors in the roles, but saddles them with so many cliches and stock personality types that none of them are allowed to break free, and show us what they can do. This is a movie that cries out for a personal and human touch, with characters that we can relate to. But thanks to the rigid storytelling, everybody just seems to be coasting from Point A to Point B to the inevitable conclusion. That's not to say the movie doesn't have a couple nice individual moments. The scenes between the geeky Lucas, and the girl he pines for, Simone, have a certain sweetness when they're not victims to the well-worn plot. (Will Simone be able to see that Lucas is right for her, and not the unfaithful and cheating jock Tyler?) I also would have liked to have seen more of Tyler's ex, Jordan, who has pretty much been coasting by on the fact that she and him have been the perfect couple in the eyes of everyone, which forced her to turn a blind eye to his cheating. Once she gets the courage to break up with him, she kind of just disappears, which is too bad. She had a lot of potential to be a strong and honest character.

Prom has pretty much been written on autopilot. We know these characters, and it's not because we can relate to them so well. We also know everything that's going to happen to them long before they do. Why would the filmmakers sell their movie short like this? They had a chance to really speak to the kids in the audience who might be dreaming about their own prom one day. Instead, we get a lazy script right out of a Screenwriting 101 class. I hope the young actors in this movie move on to better things. They deserve better than what the material gives.

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