Ryan Murphy's new musical is a half-baked toe-tapper
In the case of this Ryan Murphy movie, you're better off if no one asks you to The Prom
Pity the film that provides its own negative reviews. In the opening minutes of Netflix's Broadway-turned-movie-musical The Prom, reviews arrive for Eleanor, a musical-within-the-musical about the former first lady, Mrs. Roosevelt.
The first one is positive: “It's groundbreaking, earth-shaking, life-affirming, breathtaking, gut-wrenching, heart-aching. In two words, it's history making.”
Then there's the rest, including The New York Times, which calls it “the most insultingly misguided, offensive and laughable performance that this reviewer has ever had the squirming misfortune to endure.”
The Prom itself sits roughly midway between these two extremes. It's a bit of half-baked, forgettable fun. Or, given that one of its stars is James Corden: “Better than Cats!”
It's lucky for the movie that Eleanor flops, because its stars, played by Corden and |Meryl Streep, get together with two more showbiz pals (Nicole Kidman, Andrew Rannells) and decide to pursue a life of celebrity activism. Their literal cause célèbre is the plight of Emma (Jo Ellen Pellman), a high school senior in small-town Indiana whose school has decided to cancel its prom rather than let her attend with a same-sex date.
They land in Indiana like the drag queens in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, trailing glitter and unaware of what an Applebee's is. But despite this fish-out-of-mineral-water introduction, they quickly get to work opening hearts and minds with their
songs. They're helped by the fact that Principal Hawkins (Keegan-michael Key), is not only on Emma's side, but a huge fan of Streep's character's Broadway work.
Playing the villain for precisely as long as a villain is needed is Kerry Washington as the homophobic head of the PTA. But she's also the mother of Emma's girlfriend Alyssa (Ariana Debose), blithely unaware that her perfect daughter is also a perfectly closeted lesbian. This also nicely subverts the cinema trope of the gay kid's mom who reveals at the end that she “knew it all along.”
The stars don't divvy up their work evenly. Streep does the musical heavy lifting, and shines in the tongue-in-cheek number It's Not About Me, as well as The Lady's Improving, which she uses to woo the smitten principal. Corden is her able second-in-command, all the more when he manages to get his American accent under control. Kidman gets just one solo, the Chicago-esque number Zazz, which she belts out with aplomb.
And Pellman, who looks a bit like a young Heather Graham, is charming in this breakout role, although she sometimes struggles to look like she's singing and emoting at the same time. Meanwhile, Ryan Murphy (creator of Nip/tuck, Glee, etc.) provides adequate direction. Sometimes the camera moves around more than it needs to, and other times it's oddly still, but on average it holds together.
The Prom isn't quite up to the level of such recent filmed musicals as Disney's Hamilton or David Byrne's American Utopia, which you can find on Crave. Much like the celebrities hitching their stars to a young woman's wagon, it feels like a production looking for a reason to exist. And its can't-we-all-just-get-along ethos is the epitome of simplicity.
But in this year of the Great Pandemic, that might be just enough. In the absence of live theatre (or live much of anything), The Prom's enthusiastic, toe-tapping energy will while away an evening. Best of all, you can program the intermission whenever you like, and you won't have to line up for the loo.