Ah the prom. The highs and lows. The best night of a young life. Or the worst one. Hey, at least Ryan Murphy finds a film with as many ups and downs as prom night. The Prom, scene to scene, can go from the best film of the year to something vile and disingenuous. It’s wild, watchable, nonsense. Sounds great for an end of year distraction!
Hoping for a comeback with an Eleanor Roosevelt musical, Broadway legend Dee Dee Allen (Meryl Streep) and up & comer Barry Glickman (James Corden) get eviscerated in the press. Hoping to change the narrative of their career, Dee Dee and Barry team up with chorus girl Angie (Nicole Kidman) and Juliard Grad Trent (Andrew Rannells) go to Twitter to find a “cause” to support that won’t require a lot of work. They find a perfect one in Indiana, where young Emma (Jo Ellen Pellman) cannot take her girlfriend (Ariana Debose) to the prom because of her sexual orientation.
The Prom is frustratingly baffling. The germs of a great idea pop up every now and again. The opening numbers in Broadway and the first number in Indiana are wickedly skewering of the vanity of the stage performer: name dropping, turning everything into some narcissistic promotional effort. Plus Kerry Washington is so cartoonishly evil that the movie sets up this interesting point where powerful forces on BOTH sides of the prom debate do more harm than just letting the kids try to figure it out themselves. To no one’s surprise the anti LGBT parents and kids hide behind the Bible to justify their cruelty. Ryan Murphy then stages this incredible number in the mall where Trent uses the Bible against these kids to show how they don’t really believe what they preach, and they’re just being dicks. That’s really smart, pointed satire made more effective by a catchy musical number. The music in general is a force of joyful energy, holding the film together through the sheer power of song.
But equally demanding screen time in The Prom are studio driven forces that openly contradict what this movie is trying to sell. Meryl Streep. Nicole Kidman. James Corden. Andrew Rannells. That’s a LOT of personality inside of your film. Too much in fact, because what should be an hour and a half romp is a 2 hour 15 minute bloated mess. Jo Ellen Pellman, who should be the star of this story, is missing from large chunks of this film, blunting the emotional moments this movie is going for. Nicole Kidman, bless her heart, takes a supporting role, but doesn’t need to be in this movie at all. And Meryl Streep’s storyline with Keegan Michael Key’s principal of Emma’s school actively undermines this movie’s message, revolving Emma’s story through Dee Dee’s actions. Now if Ryan Murphy and Meryl had turned Dee Dee into the movie’s villain, that would have totally worked as a plot choice and surprise. But by consistently validating Dee Dee’s reprehensible behavior means the movie condescendingly preaches what it doesn’t practice. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but James Corden and Andrew Rannells save this movie from Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman. What is going on?
At least The Prom is frothy fun with a bit of a kick. The songs really do keep your attention, using glitz and glam to maximum effect, distracting you from the gaping flaws in the story. We are now 2 films into the Corden/Streep musical collaborations. My vote for the next one is a remake of Once, which would be a trainwreck, but a totally fun one.