Prom: Critic Reviews

At first, Prom seems a little innocuous, but this winning after-school trifle has a savvy heart that grows on you.

There are new tweeners every year. To them, the characters and plot devices in this perfectly competent film might well seem fresh.

It's the kind of thing that gives sincerity a bad name.

If you're looking for a DVD for your tweenie sleepover, then here is the movie for you: a bland, Disney drama about all the heartache and craziness leading up to a high school graduation prom night.

Here's a by-the-playbook movie if ever there was one. The machinations leading up to the big night are hardly worth the fuss: Prom's entertainment quotient comes up deficient.

She's a conformist overachiever, he's a troubled soul; a third-grader could tell that the two will fall hard for each other by the movie's halfway point.

It's a sweet, generic safe harbor for young kids, parents, and those teenagers who want to hide from the world for a couple of hours.

More material divorced from any recognizable social reality piles into Prom, as into an overloaded rental limo.

A movie that's so anachronistically mushy and awkward, it earns extra credit simply for being so innocent.

They're a ridiculously cute pair and ridiculously at odds over this whole prom thingy, which is, by its very nature, ridiculous. So the ridiculous quotient is extremely high.

Except for a couple of nice touches, "Prom" is a remedial class in cliches.

The pace is brisk, the soundtrack's bouncy, it really is more like a ride than a movie, and as lies about high school go... it goes down quite easily.

Less engrossing than a Clearasil commercial and more synthetic than a Rebecca Black video.

Director Joe Nussbaum's movie comes from promising first-time screenwriter Katie Wech. Her work has a nice spirit; "Prom" may be the same old thing, and squeaky-clean to the point of mild-to-moderate aggravation, but it's not pushy.

"Prom" is pure bubble gum, from its shiny wrapping to its mushy insides to its fleeting aftertaste. And sometimes, there's nothing wrong with chewing bubble gum.

For the target audience, Prom musters a few nice moments, perhaps, but nothing remotely approaching perfection -- and hardly any memorable ones.

"Prom" is so strenuously inoffensive it makes Disney's "High School Musical" look almost racy by comparison.

By and large "Prom" is exactly what the prom-haters in the cast say it is, a lot of build-up for something that isn't remotely as "special" as those obsessed with it wish it to be.

The cast is likeable enough, although nobody is called upon to do much more than look elated or crushed, depending on the circumstances.

Never have the stakes seemed so low for everyone involved. This is a sterile high school environment, lacking anything nearing controversy.

This is a Disney flick, complete with an ensemble of Mouseketeers doing their level best to be the Muzak of kids -- any resemblance to an actual teenager is purely accidental.

You certainly don't expect a Disney live-action movie to be ambitious or edgy, but you don't necessarily expect this degree of sloppiness either.

Nussbaum's crew works hard to maintain a fresh-scrubbed look to the school, its students and the small community that contains it. They succeed all too well. Couldn't there have been at least one wall with graffiti?

Prom means well -- and it grows on you. And it's much less of a hassle than schlepping to the real thing.

'Prom,' directed with too bland a TV hand by Joe Nussbaum, evaporates as you watch it, but it does go down easy.