Disney looks for ‘Prom’ dates
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It’s fun to count how many times the word ‘prom’ is mentioned, printed, flashed and otherwise promoted in this new trailer for ‘Prom,’ the Disney movie about same.
Then again, the film’s title has an elegant simplicity: As the trailer makes clear, this is about, no surprise, a collection of couples and quasi-couples taking the tentative steps toward the high-school rite of passage. (Kudos to the studio for dropping in at least a few characters who don’t look like they walked in from an Abercrombie catalog shoot.)
As for the quality of said film, it’s hard to tell from the group of mostly unknowns cast in this low(er)-budget Disney production if we’re looking at a more wholesome update of ‘American Pie’ or a higher-end Disney Channel movie. There are signs of both, from the glossy look (the former) to the acting (the latter).
Either way, there’s something quaint about ‘Prom,’ from its obsession over who’s asking whom to the big dance to the absence of anything resembling social media, cellphones or other technological advances from the last 15 years. Even the wrong-side-of-the-track guys feels like a throwback, a (more sanitized) version of Emilio Estevez’s Andrew Clark from ‘The Breakfast Club.’
The movie hits at the end of April, when countless prom-stressed teenagers will (Disney hopes) look to a movie theater for guidance and vicarious relief.
--Steven Zeitchik
