The Prom

“We have come to show this community that gay people, and gay positive icons such as myself, are made of the same flesh and blood as they are.”

Filmology Rating: 2 out of 4

The Prom is another Netflix film with a prestigious cast, but directed by Ryan Murphy who is most known for the show 'Glee.'

A group of self-obsessed theater stars swarm into a small conservative Indiana town in support of a high school girl who wants to take her girlfriend to the prom when the school won't allow her to.

Seeing this film was really my fault because I had no idea this was a musical and I wasn't ready for one. So the moment they all first started to break into song and dance I broke into psychotic laughter because I really didn't want to deal with that.

That's not to say I have anything against musicals. I love 'The Sound of Music,' 'Singing in the Rain' and of most recent years, 'La La Land.' A musical just has to be something special for me to really like it and 'The Prom' isn't.

There is one underlying issue with this film and it's that there are too many damn songs. Every five minutes, someone starts singing. There are almost twenty songs in this film and I can't remember or hum any of them. Every set-piece and song is so forgettable.

You think back to those great musicals above and pretty much every song from those films are memorable. Those films also put quality over quantity in terms of songs and dance numbers. 'The Prom' just throws everything at the wall and it's such a mess.

I hate to be that guy, but if I was directing this film, only certain people would sing and dance at the beginning part of the film. So just the hackneyed Broadway people. Then as the film progresses and this girl comes out to her parents, etc etc, then you have other people start singing to show their growth through the narrative and how song and dance can be like a dramatic catharsis.

However, everyone sings all the time regardless of who they are. Even the high school bullies and jocks are singing and dancing. Those are the cynical teenagers who should NOT be doing that. Perhaps during that mall scene where they have a change of heart, yes, they sing. But Ryan Murphy has every character and extra jumping and singing every ten minutes and it got extremely frustrating when you realize how hollow everything felt.

With all the glitz and glamor the film displays, it all felt so phony, ironically so because the film is about Broadway stars helping this teenager girl take her girlfriend to the prom, but the Broadway people only do so because they think it will make them look good to the public eye. That was honestly the best part of the film; seeing these phony stars acting like they care about anything but themselves.

However, as the narrative progressed I did warm up to the film. I just wish there weren't so many songs because every time I got mildly invested in what was happening, a song would start and take me back out of the film.

Many people have had a problem with James Cordon in this film because he's straight in real life, but playing a gay man here. Honestly, he was the best part of the film and the only genuine thing about it. He was bleeding into annoying at times, but Cordon has a wonderful scene where his character just unloads all of his past trauma and it was great. Then there's some resolution with his mother and I found that to be the best part of the film.

Meryl Streep is fine. She does the job well, but she and Keegan-Michael Key have a romantic subplot and I didn't think they had any chemistry at all. I could care less for either of their characters.

The dramatic elements in this film feel like an afterthought. Ryan Murphy focused so much on the sheer number of songs that he didn't bother to make one of the nineteen songs anything special, which led to a bloated runtime and little emotional investment.

I really thought I wasn't going to finish this because the opening just had me in such a whiplashing experience, but it was okay.

Rating: Rent It

-Nolan