The Prom
Year: 2020
Director: Ryan Murphy
Starring: James Corden, Jo Ellen Pellman, Nicole Kidman, Andrew Rannells & Meryl Streep
Runtime: 131 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 01/04/21
Director: Ryan Murphy
Starring: James Corden, Jo Ellen Pellman, Nicole Kidman, Andrew Rannells & Meryl Streep
Runtime: 131 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 01/04/21
I had actively avoided watching The Prom for quite some time as I had scarcely heard good things, as well as the fact that I just really don’t like James Corden in anything. But I was in the mood for a musical and nothing I already owned was resonating with me, so my girlfriend and I bit the bullet and hoped that the hate surrounding The Prom was just hyperbole. It wasn’t.
High school senior Emma (Jo Ellen Pellman) becomes the subject of social media news outlets after the PTA at her school in Alabama, led by the outspoken Mrs. Greene (Kerry Washington) have cancelled prom on the basis that they don’t want their children to attend a social event with a lesbian. This catches the attention of a small group of Broadway rejects who are in dire need of some good publicity, and so they travel down to Alabama to campaign for Emma’s right to attend her high school prom. Sparks fly when basic human rights clash with bible spouting bigotry and what seemed like a straightforward plan to deter some homophobic parents brings up a lot of repressed anger in our Broadway cohort that must be confronted if they wish to improve their public image.
High school senior Emma (Jo Ellen Pellman) becomes the subject of social media news outlets after the PTA at her school in Alabama, led by the outspoken Mrs. Greene (Kerry Washington) have cancelled prom on the basis that they don’t want their children to attend a social event with a lesbian. This catches the attention of a small group of Broadway rejects who are in dire need of some good publicity, and so they travel down to Alabama to campaign for Emma’s right to attend her high school prom. Sparks fly when basic human rights clash with bible spouting bigotry and what seemed like a straightforward plan to deter some homophobic parents brings up a lot of repressed anger in our Broadway cohort that must be confronted if they wish to improve their public image.
I’m going to start off with what worked, because there isn’t a lot of it. I thought Emma was a great character and her plight is one that I feel the film handled moderately well. Unfortunately, in places like Alabama homosexuality is seen as a problem that needs to be handled with force. The Prom tackles this issue head on and it certainly, for the first act anyway, seems like it’s going in the right direction as it ticks most of the right boxes. Unfortunately, it’s once the Broadway crew start becoming more central to the plot that it starts to fall apart in front of our very eyes.
The group is led by Dee Dee Allen (Meryl Streep) and Barry Glickman (James Corden) who are two narcissistic Broadway headliners whose new show is panned by critics on opening night and effectively puts them out of a job. They’re joined by Angie Dickinson (Nicole Kidman), a chorus girl whose attempts of making it into the spotlight have been repeatedly crushed; and Trent Oliver (Andrew Rannells), a Juilliard graduate who has yet to land a major role and works as a bartender in one of the bars on Broadway.
All of these characters are terrible, and I don’t just mean terrible in the sense that they aren’t likeable people (which they aren’t) but terrible in the sense that they aren’t interesting, they aren’t three-dimensional, they aren’t funny (which is pretty rough considering they are the comic relief), and none of the performances are good. We know that Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman can act, but in this? It’s worse than amateur dramatics! They don’t deliver lines with any passion, their eyes look glazed over, and their performance has all the power of a sloth. Rannells delivers the best performance of the group, but because the others are such muted, and tone-deaf performances, he looks like he’s overdoing it all the time and just trying too hard.
I remember when the film first released there was a lot of talk about Corden playing a gay man, and whether this was ok. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I can’t say I put much thought into it because as long as the performance is believable I don’t care if a straight actor plays a gay character, or vice-versa. But Corden has no believability, and his portrayal of what a gay man would behave like is actually kind of offensive. It’s cartoonishly gay. I worked alongside gay men in theatre for the best part of ten years and none of them acted the way Corden did in this film.
The group is led by Dee Dee Allen (Meryl Streep) and Barry Glickman (James Corden) who are two narcissistic Broadway headliners whose new show is panned by critics on opening night and effectively puts them out of a job. They’re joined by Angie Dickinson (Nicole Kidman), a chorus girl whose attempts of making it into the spotlight have been repeatedly crushed; and Trent Oliver (Andrew Rannells), a Juilliard graduate who has yet to land a major role and works as a bartender in one of the bars on Broadway.
All of these characters are terrible, and I don’t just mean terrible in the sense that they aren’t likeable people (which they aren’t) but terrible in the sense that they aren’t interesting, they aren’t three-dimensional, they aren’t funny (which is pretty rough considering they are the comic relief), and none of the performances are good. We know that Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman can act, but in this? It’s worse than amateur dramatics! They don’t deliver lines with any passion, their eyes look glazed over, and their performance has all the power of a sloth. Rannells delivers the best performance of the group, but because the others are such muted, and tone-deaf performances, he looks like he’s overdoing it all the time and just trying too hard.
I remember when the film first released there was a lot of talk about Corden playing a gay man, and whether this was ok. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I can’t say I put much thought into it because as long as the performance is believable I don’t care if a straight actor plays a gay character, or vice-versa. But Corden has no believability, and his portrayal of what a gay man would behave like is actually kind of offensive. It’s cartoonishly gay. I worked alongside gay men in theatre for the best part of ten years and none of them acted the way Corden did in this film.
Sticking with performances I want to address Ariana DeBose’s performance as Alyssa Greene, Emma’s girlfriend. It hated it. I didn’t believe for a second that this girl was a lesbian, or that she was even in love with Emma. Her character is torn between two lives, that of her heart where she is a lesbian and in love with Emma; and the other life controlled by her anti-gay mother where all that she should focus on is getting straight A’s, being valedictorian, and going to bible camp. I can empathise with this situation as I have known many people to be in such difficult circumstances, but again, her portrayal of this character is so far from reality that it genuinely angers me.
Considering The Prom was adapted from a Broadway musical of the same name you’d assume that it would at least provide some entertaining musical numbers but unfortunately it even falls short there. None of the songs are memorable, nor do they warrant an emotional response. I’m assuming these songs came from the stage show, and if that’s the case how on earth did the stage show manage to get enough momentum behind it to warrant a film adaptation when the songs are this forgettable and dull? The only song I even remember is one performed by Rannells where he highlights the hypocrisy in justifying homophobia through the bible when practicing countless other things the bible says are wrong and punishable by death or dismemberment. It’s not a good song, but it was the only one that stuck with me.
The choreography is also extremely boring to watch. Everything you see, aside from the flips that the young male cast members seem to need to do every time they are on screen, can be taught in an introduction to musical theatre class. There’s no complexity or skill involved to any of it, and even worse whoever the cinematographer is has no clue how to film dance routines as the camera wildly swings around in a pathetic attempt to mask just how die the whole farce is. There is a routine that pays tribute to Bob Fosse, and that was good, still simplistic but the staging was what made the routine work. That’s the only one in the whole musical I found to be mildly interesting.
To paraphrase the films own script, if you’re paying to see this film use the money to buy a good rope and hang yourself instead. The Prom is a total disaster, so much so that I’m unsure how the film even got off the ground. If this is the quality of the Broadway production, then I don’t even know how it became popular enough to warrant a film adaptation. Over half of the plot is rubbish, the majority of the characters are poorly written and have lazy performances attached to them, and all of the musical numbers are outright bad. It’s a crime against the gays, and even worse, it’s a crime against musical theatre!
Considering The Prom was adapted from a Broadway musical of the same name you’d assume that it would at least provide some entertaining musical numbers but unfortunately it even falls short there. None of the songs are memorable, nor do they warrant an emotional response. I’m assuming these songs came from the stage show, and if that’s the case how on earth did the stage show manage to get enough momentum behind it to warrant a film adaptation when the songs are this forgettable and dull? The only song I even remember is one performed by Rannells where he highlights the hypocrisy in justifying homophobia through the bible when practicing countless other things the bible says are wrong and punishable by death or dismemberment. It’s not a good song, but it was the only one that stuck with me.
The choreography is also extremely boring to watch. Everything you see, aside from the flips that the young male cast members seem to need to do every time they are on screen, can be taught in an introduction to musical theatre class. There’s no complexity or skill involved to any of it, and even worse whoever the cinematographer is has no clue how to film dance routines as the camera wildly swings around in a pathetic attempt to mask just how die the whole farce is. There is a routine that pays tribute to Bob Fosse, and that was good, still simplistic but the staging was what made the routine work. That’s the only one in the whole musical I found to be mildly interesting.
To paraphrase the films own script, if you’re paying to see this film use the money to buy a good rope and hang yourself instead. The Prom is a total disaster, so much so that I’m unsure how the film even got off the ground. If this is the quality of the Broadway production, then I don’t even know how it became popular enough to warrant a film adaptation. Over half of the plot is rubbish, the majority of the characters are poorly written and have lazy performances attached to them, and all of the musical numbers are outright bad. It’s a crime against the gays, and even worse, it’s a crime against musical theatre!