Review: The Prom (2020)

 Ryan Murphy goes for glitz and glamour over substance in this sadly forgettable movie musical.

The Prom (2020) is based on the Broadway play of the same name about a lesbian girl named Emma Nolan in a small town in Indiana who wants to take her girlfriend to the prom. When the local PTA bans her from attending, a group of over-the-hill Broadway stars comes to her aid.

L to R: Andrew Rannells, Meryl Streep, James Corden, and Nicole Kidman

Ultimately, one can see why Murphy would be drawn to this project. It's got everything he loves: It's a musical, it's awfully colorful and it is so, so gay. Unfortunately, translating from stage to screen has not been a strong suit for him. This year, he also adapted the Tony award-winning play, The Boys in the Band, which mostly fell on deaf ears.

The biggest sin of The Prom is in its casting. While Meryl Streep and Keegan Michael-Key are inspiring choices for a late-in-life romance, and they certainly do seem to be having fun with it, it was not a believable relationship on either performer's part. Meryl is too seasoned and talented a performer to be in this role. It just doesn't suit her. It felt like she was playing down to the character mainly because there wasn't much there to begin with.

Kerry Washington and Nicole Kidman are practically wasted in their roles. Washington plays the main agitator, but because the film relies so heavily on the whimsical and fantastic, no one's motivations feel natural or believable. Kerry feels like an ally playing a villain the entire movie, which is why she's practically waving the rainbow flag by the end of it. Kidman, who is a bonafide star, was relegated to the background for much of the film, given only a single dance number with the main character towards the end of the film that still feels out of place and awkward. She doesn't bring the film down, but she does nothing to elevate it either.

Much like what Murphy did with The Boys in the Band, merely taking the exact same beats from the stage play and putting it on screen is what fails this movie. Staging and blocking work differently in film and it all has to seem natural, which it definitely does not in this film. The changes made are either miniature or actively harm the picture. By casting James Corden in the role of Barry Glickman, a catty and flamboyant gay actor, noting that Corden himself is not actually gay, there is a change at the end of the second song that completely reworks his character.

The original line in the play is "Now let's go help that dyke."

It is changed to "Now let's go start a fight."

The reason for the change is that gay people can make cheeky comments about other gay people, but if someone is not, then it will be seen as offensive. 

Corden's performance was not well-received among the LGBTQ+ community.

Casting Corden, who overall does a fine job in the picture, is still a bit of a mistake as Glickman can't be his ever-snappy self. And Corden doesn't help by playing the character as someone who's only seen how gay men behave and is merely copying what he sees. 

Then there is the music, which is ultimately a mixed bag. While insanely formulaic, you can't deny that it's a formula that works. There are some songs that are just downright catchy and will make you want to sing along or dance, but then there are other ones that feel like they were plucked from better musicals and dumped here, and if you're one of those people who can't understand movies where people spontaneously burst into song, those moments will feel like torture and they happen far too often where an emotional beat is immediately cut off by the intro to a ballad.  

Still, it's not all bad. If you can look past the generic music, the bad casting choices, and the pretty lackluster way it was all thrown together, it can be charming. When the film focuses on Emma (Pellman) and Alyssa's (Ariana Debose) relationship as the two young lovers who want to go to Prom together, it's when the film is at its absolute best. And those are the film's shining moments. With its overlong runtime of 2 hours and 12 minutes, it manages to squeeze enough of those moments in there to endear the film to you, but it's when it strays away from those moments that it really goes off the rails.

Luckily, Murphy was smart enough to reach back and get Andrew Rannells again (he played Larry in The Boys in the Band and was among the few standout performances.) Here, he gives a scene-stealing performance again when he reaches out to Emma's classmates and performs the song "Love Thy Neighbor."

Sadly, for the most part, Murphy seems to be content with the zazz and spectacle, the pomp and musicality of it all, but he fails to make the girls' struggle feel real. With cardboard antagonists and one-sided allies, the fight never feels earned, but hollow, plastic. It's got all the glitz and glamour and unfortunately, not nearly enough of the heart.