“Prom Dates” follows teenage best-friends-cum-partners-in-crime during the monotony of pre-prom, as the title suggests, two teenage girls start getting into trouble. The film has an immense amount of warmth for its raunchy, R-rated circumstances. There has been a style of filmmaking that has been consistent throughout the years, but seems to have grown into utmost popularity in the 2007 film, ‘Superbad’ and was probably given fresher takes by ‘Booksmart.’ It was written by D.J. Mausner and Kim O. Nguyen, both of whom started their careers in TV comedies, directed it. Consequently, it has a sitcom quality owing to the single camera style but has been shot in an aspect ratio that is supposed to scream out, ‘something revolutionary is happening.’ It mostly seems to be a pilot of a series that wouldn’t receive much traction, but would get a viewership sufficiently large to outlast two seasons before being taken off air to not increase the production cost. That said, the film is impressive in many aspects, the cast surely was rather capable.
The two young girls were Jess (Antonia Gentry) and Hannah (Julia Lester), who at the age of thirteen made one of the most outrageous commitments when they couldn’t even see themselves selling lemonade. They sat beneath a table at an uninvited prom event and magically, soon, Hannah would always have a perfect date while Jess believed that she would grow to become prom’s queen and the most loved girl in high school.
The day of senior prom has come and gone. Five years have passed. Try to bring order to the overpowering confusion as Jess would want to secure the crown by taking with her a rather attractive but incredibly superficial and wealthy boy named Luca (Jordan Buhat). However, on the eve of the prom, she sees him cheating on her and breaks off their relationship. (Addendum: Luca is apologizing after the other secret hookup left in a huff: “Siri, stop playing sexy time playlist.”)
Hannah, on the other hand, does not even have a date for the prom, so she proposes to one of his friends, the obsessive Number One fan Greg (Kenny Ridwan, drawing from Mike Yanagita’s frantic spirit in “Fargo”), in the middle of an assembly: “Marry me!” She agrees to it, although she’s still disinterested in Greg, who is rather obnoxious and just doesn’t take the hint for answers; what irks her the most is the fact that she is a lesbian but hasn’t told a single person about it, not Jess nor anybody else.
Most of the films revolve around a college mixer involving a great deal of drug and alcohol consumption, all of which are intended to facilitate sex that, quite fine, turns out, doesn’t take place. The whole storyline is a contorted mess of events that envelop back into itself to make any audience rationally curse for the conclusion. It goes to say that no one would contest Lady and her wish, come together eventually. All it needs is a little bit of ‘wow’ that is indeed owed to the ending of the entire dilemma.
A great number of ‘Prom Dates’ clips have an unmistakable resemblance to post-millennial formula television such as scripted comedies – where moments of distension or transformations are abruptly interrupted by body excretions (in this case vomit and blood) or scenes where partygoers are seen conversing with others whom they see as normal only to realize later on how odd the person is (in this case there’s a group of eccentric people like an aspiring serial killer and a Vodka Heather, a woman imbibed with courage who goes around calling herself after alcohol).
Many of the dialogue feels something that can be written in a sitcom writer’s in Hollywood: strident, formulaic, and both delivered and received in concise ‘tweet-like’ phrases. Each of these gaffes is regrettable and on every level in the industry so it’s not that ‘Prom Dates’ is standing out as a case. But the script is written in such a way that you get the sense the writers used every shot at making their argument and many of their jokes are extremely witty to the point where they are especially suited for the internet, like any of the many memorable lines delivered by the character Hannah, overventilated and jaded and altogether pissed off, but does make you want to be the person who could write a screenplay just like this one.
“She’s been not so subtly joking at me every time saying ‘Your taste in music is all the women’s voice which sounds like a sad ghost anyway so no one can blame you,’” she tells her loving brother Jacob (JT Neal). During the dinner table prom date request with all the lesbians and wannabe lesbians she can find, one sends a text back saying, “Sorry! I’m not a lesbian, I’m just a lesbian-loving softball enthusiast,” so Heather fires back, “What a crock! She had 42 home runs this year!”
The actors themselves are charming even when the film tries hard to make them adhere to the gym bod-teen movie stereotypes. And it is interesting to see not one, but many young actors being given the freedom to be themselves while simultaneously being expected to do plenty of character-driven scene work. Gentry and Lester share such compelling chemistry (especially when they’re with the characters in conflict) that I wouldn’t mind more light romantic comedies where they are the leads. The one who goes the most over the top is Ridwan, who plays Greg as a nerdy and innocent kid but who has bursts of charm that are reminiscent of Nicolas Cage in his earlier films. There is a scene from the end where Hannah and Greg interact which is straight-up, brutally true.
It would be interesting to revisit “Prom Dates” in around 10 years’ time and create a report of all the major performers who were revealed to the audience in this film.
To Watch More Movies Like Prom Dates (2024) Visit Soap2day.
