THE PROM (2020) – Here is one prom you will want to miss

At the beginning of The Prom, we are introduced to two fading Broadway singers played by Meryl Streep and James Corden as their new Boradway musical, “Eleanor” opened to disastrous reviews. The toxic reviews shared on screen provided some laughs but after watching The Prom, the laugh may be on the poor viewers as one can easily pass these same critical remarks to describe the movie as well.

The Prom is a musical comedy that is based on a recent 2018 Broadway musical of the same name. That stage musical may have garnered some respectable recognition but this movie adaptation is truly terrible. This despite the impressive people involved in the production from its director Ryan Murphy, to the cast that includes Meryl, James, Nicole Kidman, Kerry Washington and Keegan -Michael Key. Just looking at the cast and premise on paper already makes me want to watch this. The high expectations soon gives way to reality as the music and song and plot fails to engage or connect. The story involving the prejudice against gays in an Indiana high school which decided to cancel the Prom to avoid the controversy having one of their girl student bring along her girlfriend is quite frankly, boring. Ryan Murphy has always been an advocate for the LGBT society as his TV series and films are often heavily gay themed. The Prom is no exception exception here the characters are all presented like one dimensional cartoon characters making it impossible to take things seriously. The movie’s length of 2 hours 10 mins is definitely too long as it might have been a bit more bearable had it been under 90 minutes.

The casting may seem like a major coup but it is really painful to watch Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman act in what is possibly their career worst. Their singing and dancing is amateurish and the seemingly endless list of mediocre songs belted out does little to make things better. All the songs sound sugary sweet like those you hear from Disney animation which are easily forgettable. James Corden seem not to have learnt his lesson from appearing in Cats, by insisting on singing and dancing here again. He should stick to his night TV host job and not have these fantasies about being a musical star. Meryl Streep is also unconvincing and for once, Trump may be right in calling her “the most overrated actress”!

I could go on and on about how misguided this film is but at the end of the day, who knows, some of you out there may actually like these sort of films. As far as I am concern this film should be avoided and treated as never existed.